BX  5937  .B83  C3  1881 
Brooks,  Phillips,  1835-1893 
The  candle  of  the  Lord 


Phillips  Brooks's  Sermons 


In  Ten  Volumes 
1st  Serie*     The  Purpose  and  Use  of  Comfort 

And  Other  Sermons 

2d  Series  The  Candle  of  the  Lord 

And  Other  Sermons 

3d  Series        Scrmons  Prcached  in  English 
Churches 

And  Other  Sermons 
4th  Series     VisionS  and  Tasks       And  Other  Sermons 

5th  Series  The  Light  of  the  World 

And  Other  Sermons 
6th  Series     The  Battle  of  Life        And  Other  Sermons 

7th  Series    Sermons   for  the    Principal  Festi- 
vals and  Fasts  of  the  Church  Year 

Edited  by  the  Rev.  John  Cotton  Brooks 
8th  Series     New  IStartS  in  Life       And  Other  Sermons 

9th  Series  The  Law  of  Growth 

And  Other  Sermons 
lOlh  Series         Seeking  Life        And  Other  Sermons 


E.    P.    Dutton   and   Company 

681    Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


The  Candle  of  the  Lord^ 

r 

And  Other  Sermons 


By  the 
Rt.  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  D.D. 


Second  Series 


NEW  YORK  1 
E.  P.  BUTTON  &   COMPANY 

68 1  Fifth  Ave. 


Copyright,  iS8i 

BT 

E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 


THE   CANDLE   OF   THE   LORD 


AND    OTHER    SERMONS. 


CONTENTS. 


Sebmon  Paqk 

/^        I.     The  Candle  of  the  Lord 1 

"  The  spirit  of  man  is  tlie  candle  of  the  Lord."  — 
Prov.  XX.  27. 

II.     The  Joy  of  Self-saceifice 22 

"  And  when  the  burnt  offering  began,  the  song  of 
the  Lord  began  also  with  the  trumpets." — 2  Chron. 
xxix.  27. 

III.     The  Young  and  Old  Christian    ....       39 

"  The  good-will  of  Him  that  dwelt  in  the  bush."  — 
Deut.  xxxiii.  16. 

^  IV.     The  Pillar  in  God's  Temple 60 

"Him  that  overcometh  will  I  make  a  pillar  in  the 
Temple  of  my  God,  and  he  shall  go  no  more  out ; 
and  I  will  write  upon  him  the  name  of  my  God,  and 
the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God,  .  .  .  and  my  new 
name."  —  Rev.  iii.  12. 

V.    The  Eye  of  the  Soul 74 

"  The  light  of  the  body  is  the  eye.  If  therefore 
thine  eye  be  single,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of 
light."  —  Matt.  vi.  22 

(^    VI.     The  Man  of  Macedonia 91 

"  And  a  vision  appeared  unto  Paul  in  the  night : 
There  stood  a  man  of  Macedonia  and  prayed  him, 
saying,  Come  over  into  Macedonia  and  help  us."  — 
Acts  xvi.  9. 


VI  CONTENTS. 

Sebhon  Paob 

VII.     The  Symmbtry  op  Life 110 

"  The  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  height  of  it 
are  equal."  —  Rev.  xxi.  16. 

^         VIII.     How  MANY  Loaves  have  Ye?     ....     127 

"And  Jesus  saith  unto  them,  How  many  loaves 
have  ye  f  "  —  Matt.  xv.  34. 

IX.     The    Need   of  Self-kespect   (a  Thanks- 
giving Sermon) 147 

"And  he  said,  Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet, 
and  I  will  speak  to  thee."  —  Ezek.  ii.  1. 

X.  The  Heroism  op  Foreign  Missions  .  .  163 
"As  they  ministered  to  the  Lord  and  fasted,  the 
Holy  Ghost  said,  Separate  me  Barnabas  and  Saul 
for  the  work  whereunto  I  have  called  them.  And 
when  they  had  fasted  and  prayed,  and  laid  their  hands 
on  them,  they  sent  them  away."  —  Acts  xiii.  2,  3. 

I   ,  XL     The  Law  of  Liberty 183 

"  So  speak  ye,  and  so  do,  as  they  that  shall  be 
judged  by  the  law  of  liberty."  — James  ii.  12. 

XII.     Fasting  (a  Sermon  for  Lent) 200 

"  Moreover,  when  ye  fast,  be  not  as  the  hypocrites, 
of  a  sad  countenance.  .  .  .  That  thou  appear  not 
unto  men  to  fast,  but  unto  thy  Father  which  is  in 
secret."  —  Mat.  vi.  16,  18. 

XIII.  A  Whitsunday  Sermon 217 

"And  they  said  unto  him,  We  have  not  so 
much  as  heard  whether  there  be  any  Holy 
Ghost."  —  Acts  xix.  2. 

XIV.  CriRisT  the  Food  of  Man 232 

"  The  Jews  tlierefore  strove  among  themselves, 
saying.  How  can  this  man  give  us  his  flesh  to 
eaf?"  —  John  vi.  52. 


CONTENTS.  vii 

Sesmok  Paok 

XV.     The  Manliness  of  Cheist 253 

"  Handle  me  and  see,  for  a  spirit  hath  not  flesh 
and  bones,  as  ye  see  me  have."  —  Luke  xxiv.  39. 

l^    XVI.     Help  from  the  Hills 270 

"  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills,  from 
whence  cometh  my  help."  —  Psalm  cxxi.  1. 

I     XVII.     The  Curse  of  Meroz 287 

"  Curse  ye  Meroz,  saith  the  angel  of  the  Lord, 
curse  ye  bitterly  the  inhabitants  thereof;  because 
they  came  not  to  the  help  of  the  Lord,  to  the  help 
of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty." — Judges  v.  23. 

XVIII.     The  Mystery  of  Light  (a  Sermon  for 

Trinity  Sunday) 305 

"  Who  coverest  Thyself  with  light  as  with  a  gar- 
ment." —  Psalm  civ.  2. 

XIX.     The  Accumulation  of  Faith  ....     320 

"  Behold,  he  smote  the  rock,  that  the  water 
gushed  out,  and  the  streams  overflowed.  Can  he 
give  bread  also  ?  Can  he  provide  flesh  for  his 
people"?"  —  Psalm  Ixxviii.  20. 

XX.     Christian  Charity 336 

"  And  there  came  a  traveller  unto  the  rich  man  ; 
and  he  spared  to  take  of  his  own  flock  and  his  own 
herd  to  dress  for  the  wayfaring  man  that  was  come 
unto  him."  —  2  Samuel  xii.  4. 

XXI.     The  Marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus  .     .     .     355 

"  From  henceforth  let  no  man  trouble  me, 
for  I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of  the  Lord 
Jeeus."  —  Gal.  vi.  17. 


SERMONS. 


I. 

THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD. 
"  The  spirit  of  man  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord."  —  Prov.  xx.  27. 

The  essential  connection  between  the  life  of  God  and 
the  life  of  man  is  the  great  truth  of  the  world ;  and  that 
is  the  truth  which  Solomon  sets  forth  in  the  striking 
words  which  I  have  chosen  for  my  text  this  morning. 
The  picture  which  the  words  suggest  is  very  simple. 
An  unlighted  candle  is  standing  in  the  darkness  and  some 
one  comes  to  light  it.  A  blazing  bit  of  paper  holds  the 
fire  at  first,  but  it  is  vague  and  fitful.  It  flares  and  wavers 
and  at  any  moment  may  go  out.  But  the  vague,  uncer- 
tain, flaring  blaze  touches  the  candle,  and  the  candle 
catches  fire  and  at  once  you  have  a  steady  flame.  It 
burns  straight  and  clear  and  constant.  The  candle  gives 
the  fire  a  manifestation-point  for  all  the  room  which  is 
illuminated  by  it.  The  candle  is  glorified  by  the  fire 
and  the  fire  is  manifested  by  the  candle.  The  two  bear 
witness  that  they  were  made  for  one  another  by  the  way 
in  which  they  fulfil  each  other's  life.  That  fulfilment 
comes  by  the  way  in  which  the  inferior  substance  renders 
obedience  to  its  superior.  The  candle  obeys  the  fire. 
The  docile  wax  acknowledges  that  the  subtle  flame  is 
its  master  and  it  yields  to  his  power ;  and  so,  like  every 
'l 


2  THE   CANDLE   OF   THE   LORD. 

faithful  servant  of  a  noble  master,  it  at  once  gives  its 
master's  nobility  the  chance  to  utter  itself,  and  its  own 
substance  is  clothed  with  a  glory  which  is  not  its  own. 
The  disobedient  granite,  if  you  try  to  burn  it,  neither 
gives  the  fire  a  chance  to  show  its  brightness  nor  gathers 
any  splendor  to  itself  It  only  glows  with  sullen  resist- 
ance, and,  as  the  heat  increases,  splits  and  breaks  but 
will  not  yield.  But  the  candle  obeys,  and  so  in  it  the 
scattered  fire  finds  a  point  of  permanent  and  clear  ex- 
pression. 

Can  we  not  see,  with  such  a  picture  clear  before  us, 
what  must  be  meant  when  it  is  said  that  one  being  is 
the  candle  of  another  being  ?  There  is  in  a  community 
a  man  of  large,  rich  character,  whose  influence  runs 
everywhere.  You  cannot  talk  with  any  man  in  all  the 
city  but  you  get,  shown  in  that  man's  own  way,  the 
thought,  the  feeling  of  that  central  man  who  teaches  all 
the  community  to  think,  to  feel.  The  very  boys  catch 
something  of  his  power,  and  have  something  about  them 
that  would  not  be  there  if  he  were  not  living  in  the  town. 
What  better  description  could  you  give  of  all  that,  than 
to  say  that  that  man's  life  was  fire  and  that  all  these 
men's  lives  were  candles  which  he  lighted,  which  gave 
to  the  rich,  warm,  live,  fertile  nature  that  was  in  him 
multiplied  points  of  steady  exhibition,  so  that  he  lighted 
the  town  tlirough  them  ?  Or,  not  to  look  so  widely,  I 
pity  you  if  in  the  circle  of  your  home  there  is  not  some 
warm  and  living  nature  which  is  your  fire.  Your  cold, 
dark  can  die- nature,  touched  by  that  fire,  burns  bright 
and  clear.  Wherever  you  are  carried,  perhaps  into  re- 
gions where  that  nature  cannot  go,  you  carry  its  fire  and 
set  it  up  in  some  new  place.    Nay,  the  fire  itself  may  have 


THF  CANDLE   OF   THE  LORD,  3 

disappeared,  the  nature  may  have  vanished  from  the  earth 
and  gone  to  heaven ;  and  yet  still  your  candle-life,  which 
was  lighted  at  it,  keeps  that  fire  still  in  the  world,  as  the 
fire  of  the  lightning  lives  in  the  tree  that  it  has  struck, 
long  after  the  quick  lightning  itself  has  finished  its 
short,  hot  life  and  died.  So  the  man  in  the  counting- 
room  is  the  candle  of  the  woman  who  stays  at  home, 
making  her  soft  influence  felt  in  the  rough  places  of 
trade  where  her  feet  never  go ;  and  so  a  man  who  lives 
like  an  inspiration  in  the  city  for  honesty  and  purity 
und  charity  may  be  only  the  candle  in  whose  obedient 
life  burns  still  the  fire  of  another  strong,  true  man  who 
was  his  father,  and  who  passed  out  of  men's  sight  a 
score  of  years  ago.  Men  call  the  father  dead,  but  he  is 
no  more  dead  than  the  torch  has  gone  out  which  lighted 
the  beacon  that  is  blazing  on  the  hill. 

And  now,  regarding  all  this  lighting  of  life  from  life, 
two  things  are  evident,  the  same  two  which  appeared 
in  the  story  of  the  caudle  and  its  flame :  First,  there 
must  be  a  correspondency  of  nature  between  the  two ; 
and  second,  there  must  be  a  cordial  obedience  of  the 
l^ss  to  the  greater.  The  nature  which  cannot  feel  the 
other  nature's  warmth,  even  if  it  is  held  close  to  it ;  and 
the  nature  which  refuses  to  be  held  where  the  other 
nature's  flame  can  reach  it,  —  both  of  these  must  go  un- 
lighted,  no  matter  how  hotly  the  fire  of  the  higher  life 
may  burn. 

I  think  that  we  are  ready  now  to  turn  to  Solomon 
and  read  his  words  again  and  understand  them.  "  The 
spirit  of  man  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord,"  he  says.  God 
is  the  fire  of  this  world,  its  vital  principle,  a  warm  per- 
vading presence  evervwhere.     What  thing  of  outward 


4  THE   CANDLE  OF  THE   LORD. 

nature  can  so  picture  to  us  the  mysterious,  the  subtle, 
the  quick,  live,  productive  and  destructive  thought,  which 
has  always  lifted  men's  hearts  and  solemnized  their  faces 
when  they  have  said  the  word  GOD,  as  this  strange 
thing,  —  so  heavenly,  so  unearthly,  so  terrible,  and  yet  so 
gracious ;  so  fuU  of  creativeness,  and  yet  so  quick  and 
fierce  to  sweep  whatever  opposes  it  out  of  its  path,  —  this 
marvel,  this  beauty  and  glory  and  mystery  of  fire  ?  Men 
have  always  felt  the  fitness  of  the  figure ;  and  the  fire 
has  always  crowded,  closest  of  all  earthly  elements,  about 
the  throne  on  which  their  conception  of  Deity  was  seated. 
And  now  of  this  fire  the  spirit  of  man  is  the  candle. 
What  does  that  mean  ?  If,  because  man  is  of  a  nature 
which  corresponds  to  the  nature  of  God,  and  just  so  far 
as  man  is  obedient  to  God,  the  life  of  God,  which  is 
spread  throughout  the  universe,  gathers  itself  into  utter- 
ance ;  and  men,  aye,  and  all  other  beings,  if  such  beings 
there  are,  capable  of  watching  our  humanity,  see  what 
God  is,  in  gazing  at  the  man  whom  He  has  kindled,  — 
then  is  not  the  figure  plain  ?  It  is  a  wondrous  thought, 
but  it  is  clear  enough.  Here  is  the  universe,  full  of  the 
diffused  fire  of  divinity.  Men  feel  it  in  the  air,  as  they 
feel  an  intense  heat  which  has  not  broken  into  a  blaze. 
That  is  the  meaning  of  a  great  deal  of  the  unexplained, 
mysterious  awfulness  of  life,  of  which  they  who  are  very 
much  in  its  power  are  often  only  half  aware.  It  is  the 
sense  of  God,  felt  but  unseen,  like  an  atmosphere  bur- 
dened with  heat  that  does  not  burst  out  into  fire.  Now 
in  the  midst  of  this  solemn,  burdened  world  there  stands 
up  a  man,  pure,  God-like,  and  perfectly  obedient  to  God. 
In  an  instant  it  is  as  if  the  heated  room  had  found  some 
sensitive,  inflammable  point  where  it  could  kindle  to  a 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE   LORD.  5 

blaze.  The  vague  oppressiveness  of  God's  felt  presence 
becomes  clear  and  definite.  The  fitfulness  of  the  im- 
pression of  divinity  is  steadied  into  permanence.  The 
mystery  changes  its  character,  and  is  a  mystery  of  light 
and  not  of  darkness.  The  fire  of  the  Lord  has  found 
the  candle  of  the  Lord,  and  burns  clear  and  steady,, 
guiding  and  cheering  instead  of  bewildering  and  fright- 
ening us,  just  so  soon  as  a  man  who  is  obedient  to 
God  has  begun  to  catch  and  manifest  His  nature. 

I  hope  that  we  shall  find  that  this  truth  comes  very 
close  to  our  personal,  separate  lives  ;  but,  before  we  come 
to  that,  let  me  remind  you  first  with  what  a  central 
dignity  it  clothes  the  life  of  man  in  the  great  world. 
Certain  philosophies,  which  belong  to  our  time,  would 
depreciate  the  importance  of  man  in  the  world,  and  rob 
him  of  his  centralness.  Man's  instinct  and  man's  pride 
rebel  against  them,  but  he  is  puzzled  by  their  speciouis- 
ness.  Is  it  indeed  true,  as  it  seems,  that  the  world  is 
made  for  man,  and  that  from  man,  standing  in  the  centre, 
all  things  besides  which  the  world  contains  get  their 
true  value  and  receive  the  verdict  of  their  destiny  '. 
That  was  the  old  story  that  the  Bible  told.  The  booJv 
of  Genesis  with  its  Garden  of  Eden,  and  its  obedient 
beasts  waiting  until  the  man  should  tell  them  what  they 
should  be  called,  struck  firmly,  at  tlie  beginning  of  the 
anthem  of  the  world's  history,  the  great  note  of  the  cen- 
tralness of  man.  And  the  Garden  of  Eden,  in  this  its 
first  idea,  repeats  itself  in  every  cabin  of  the  western, 
forests  or  the  southern  jungles,  where  a  new  Adam  and 
a  new  Eve,  a  solitary  settler  and  his  wife,  begin  as  it 
were  the  human  history  anew.  There  once  again  the 
note  of  Genesis  is  struck,  and  man  asserts  his  central- 


6  THE   CANDLE   OF  THE  LORD. 

ness.  The  forest  waits  to  catch  the  color  of  his  life. 
The  beasts  hesitate  in  fear  or  anger  till  he  shall  tame 
them  to  his  service  or  bid  them  depart.  The  earth  under 
his  feet  holds  its  fertility  at  his  command,  and  answers 
the  summons  of  his  grain  or  flower-seeds.  The  very  sky 
over  his  head  regards  him,  and  what  he  does  upon  the 
earth  is  echoed  in  the  changes  of  the  climate  and  the 
haste  or  slowness  of  the  storms.  This  is  the  great  im- 
pression which  all  the  simplest  life  of  man  is  ever 
creating,  and  with  which  the  philosophies,  which  would 
make  little  of  the  separateness  and  centralness  of  the 
life  of  man,  must  always  have  to  fight.  And  this  is 
the  impression  which  is  taken  up  and  strengthened  and 
made  clear,  and  turned  from  a  petty  pride  to  a  lofty 
dignity  and  a  solemn  responsibility,  when  there  comes 
such  a  message  as  this  of  Solomon's.  He  says  that  the 
true  separateness  and  superiority  and  centralness  of  man 
is  in  that  likeness  of  nature  to  God,  and  that  capacity 
of  spiritual  obedience  to  Him,  in  virtue  of  which  man 
may  be  the  declaration  and  manifestation  of  God  to  all 
the  world.  So  long  as  that  truth  stands,  the  centralness 
of  man  is  sure.  "  The  spirit  of  man  is  the  candle  of  the 
Lord." 

This  is  the  truth  of  which  I  wish  to  speak  to  you 
to-day,  the  perpetual  revelation  of  God  by  human  life. 
You  must  ask  yourself  first,  what  God  is.  You  must 
see  how  at  the  very  bottom  of  His  existence,  as  you 
conceive  of  it,  lie  these  two  thoughts  —  purpose  and 
righteousness ;  how  absolutely  impossible  it  is  to  give 
God  any  personality  except  as  the  fulfilment  of  these 
two  qualities  —  the  intelligence  that  plans  in  love,  and 
the  righteousness  that  lives  in  duty.     Then  ask  yourself 


THE   CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD.  7 

how  any  knowledge  of  these  qualities  —  of  what  they  are, 
of  what  kind  of  being  they  will  make  in  their  perfect 
combination  —  could  exist  upon  the  earth  if  there  were 
not  a  human  nature  here  in  which  they  could  be  uttered, 
from  which  they  could  shine.  Only  a  person  can  truly 
utter  a  person.  Only  from  a  character  can  a  character 
be  echoed.  You  might  write  it  all  over  the  skies  that 
God  was  just,  but  it  would  not  burn  there.  It  would 
be,  at  best,  only  a  bit  of  knowledge ;  never  a  Gospel ; 
never  something  which  it  would  gladden  the  hearts  of 
men  to  know.  That  comes  only  when  a  human  life, 
capable  of  a  justice  like  God's,  made  just  by  God,  glows 
with  His  justice  in  the  eyes  of  men,  a  candle  of  the  Lord. 
I  have  just  intimated  one  thing  which  we  need  to 
observe.  Man's  utterance  of  God  is  purely  an  utterance 
of  quality.  It  can  tell  me  nothing  of  the  quantities 
which  make  up  His  perfect  life.  That  God  is  just,  and 
what  it  is  to  be  just  —  those  things  I  can  learn  from  the 
just  lives  of  the  just  men  about  me ;  but  how  just  God 
is,  to  what  unconceived  perfection,  to  what  unexpected 
developments  of  itself,  that  majestic  quality  of  justice 
may  extend  in  Him,  —  of  that  I  can  form  no  judgment, 
that  is  worth  anything,  from  the  justice  that  I  see  in 
fellow- man.  This  seems  to  me  to  widen  at  once  the 
range  of  the  truth  which  I  am  stating.  If  it  be  the 
quality  of  God  which  man  is  capable  of  uttering,  then 
it  must  be  the  quality  of  manhood  that  is  necessary  for 
the  utterance  ;  the  quality  of  manhood,  but  not  any 
specific  quantity,  not  any  assignable  degree  of  human 
greatness.  Whoever  has  in  him  the  human  quality, 
whoever  really  has  the  spirit  of  man,  may  be  a  candle 
of  the  Lord.     A  larger  measure  of  that  spirit  may  make 


8  THE   CANDLE   OF  THE   LORD. 

a  brighter  light ;  but  there  must  be  a  light  wherever 
any  human  being,  in  virtue  of  his  humanness,  by  obe- 
dience becomes  luminous  with  God.  There  are  the  men 
of  lofty  spiritual  genius,  the  leaders  of  our '  race.  How 
they  stand  out  through  history !  How  all  men  feel  as 
they  pass  into  their  presence  that  they  are  passing  into 
the  light  of  God !  They  are  puzzled  when  they  try  to 
explain  it.  There  is  nothing  more  instructive  and  sug- 
gestive than  the  bewilderment  which  men  feel  when 
they  try  to  tell  what  inspiration  is,  —  how  men  become 
inspired.  The  lines  which  they  draw  through  the  con- 
tinual communication  between  God  and  man  are  always 
becoming  unsteady  and  confused.  But  in  general,  he 
who  comes  into  the  presence  of  any  powerful  nature, 
whose  power  is  at  all  of  a  spiritual  sort,  feels  sure  that 
in  some  way  he  is  coming  into  the  presence  of  God. 
But  it  would  be  melancholy  if  only  the  great  men  could 
give  us  this  conviction.  The  world  would  be  darker 
than  it  is  if  every  human  spirit,  so  soon  as  it  became 
obedient,  did  not  become  the  Lord's  candle.  A  poor, 
meagre,  starved,  bruised  life,  if  only  it  keeps  the  true 
human  quality  and  does  not  become  inhuman,  and  if  it 
is  obedient  to  God  in  its  blind,  dull,  half-conscious  way, 
becomes  a  light.  Lives  yet  more  dark  than  it  is,  become 
dimly  aware  of  God  through  it.  A  mere  child,  in  his 
pure  humanity,  and  with  his  easy  and  instinctive  turn- 
ing of  his  life  toward  the  God  from  whom  he  came,  — 
it  is  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  your  homes  how  often 
he  may  burn  with  some  suggestion  of  divinity,  and  cast 
illumination  upon  problems  and  mysteries  whose  diffi- 
culty he  himself  has  never  felt.  There  are  great  lamps 
and  little   lamps  burning  everywhere.      The  world  is 


THE   CANDLE   OF   THE  LORD.  9 

bright  with  them.  You  shut  your  book  in  which  you 
have  been  holding  communion  with  one  of  the  great 
souls  of  all  time ;  and  while  you  are  standing  in  the 
light  which  he  has  shed  about  him,  your  child  beside 
you  says  some  simple,  childlike  thing,  and  a  new  thread 
of  shining  wisdom  runs  through  the  sweet  and  subtle 
thoughts  that  the  great  thinker  gave  you,  as  the  light 
of  a  little  taper  sends  its  special  needle  of  brightness 
through  the  pervasive  splendor  of  a  sunlit  world.  It  is 
not  strange.  The  fire  is  the  same,  whatever  be  the 
human  lamp  that  gives  it  its  expression.  There  is  no 
life  so  humble  that,  if  it  be  true  and  genuinely  human 
and  obedient  to  God,  it  may  not  hope  to  shed  some  of 
His  light.  There  is  no  life  so  meagre  that  the  greatest 
and  wisest  of  us  can  afford  to  despise  it.  We  cannot 
know  at  all  at  what  sudden  moment  it  may  flash  forth 
with  the  life  of  God. 

And  in  this  truth  of  ours  we  have  certainly  the  key 
to  another  mystery  which  sometimes  puzzles  us.  What 
shall  we  make  of  some  man  rich  in  attainments  and  in 
generous  desires,  well  educated,  well  behaved,  who  has 
trained  himself  to  be  a  light  and  help  to  other  men,  and 
who,  now  that  his  training  is  complete,  stands  in  the 
midst  of  his  fellow-men  completely  dark  and  helpless  ? 
There  are  plenty  of  such  men.  We  have  all  known 
them  who  have  seen  how  men  grow  up.  Their  breth- 
ren stand  around  them  expecting  light  from  them,  but 
no  light  comes.  They  themselves  are  full  of  amaze- 
ment at  themselves.  They  built  themselves  for  influ- 
ence, but  no  one  feels  them.  They  kindled  themselves 
to  give  light,  but  no  one  shines  a  grateful  answer  back 
to  them.     Perhaps  they  blame  their  fellow-men,  who 


10  THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD. 

are  too  dull  to  see  their  radiance.  Perhaps  they  only 
wonder  what  is  the  matter,  and  wait,  with  a  hope  that 
never  quite  dies  out  into  despair,  for  the  long-delayed 
recognition  and  gratitude.  At  last  they  die,  and  the 
men  who  stand  about  their  graves  feel  that  the  saddest 
thing  about  their  death  is  that  the  world  is  not  percep- 
tibly the  darker  for  their  dying.  What  does  it  mean  ? 
If  we  let  the  truth  of  Solomon's  figure  play  upon  it,  is 
not  the  meaning  of  the  familiar  failure  simply  this : 
These  men  are  unlighted  candles ;  they  are  the  spirit  of 
man,  elaborated,  cultivated,  finished  to  its  very  finest, 
but  lacking  the  last  touch  of  God.  As  dark  as  a  row 
of  silver  lamps,  all  chased  and  wrought  with  wondrous 
skill,  all  filled  with  rarest  oil,  but  all  untouched  with 
fire,  —  so  dark  in  this  world  is  a  long  row  of  cultivated 
men,  set  up  along  the  corridors  of  some  age  of  history, 
around  the  halls  of  some  wise  university,  or  in  the  pul- 
pits of  some  stately  church,  to  whom  there  has  come  no 
fire  of  devotion,  who  stand  in  awe  and  reverence  before 
no  wisdom  greater  than  their  own,  who  are  proud  and 
selfish,  who  do  not  know  what  it  is  to  obey.  There  is 
the  explanation  of  your  wonder  when  you  cling  close  to 
some  man  whom  the  world  calls  bright,  and  find  that 
you  get  no  brightness  from  him.  There  is  the  explana- 
tion of  yourself,  0  puzzled  man,  who  never  can  make 
out  why  the  world  does  not  turn  to  you  for  help.  The 
poor  blind  world  cannot  tell  its  need,  nor  analyze  its 
instinct,  nor  say  why  it  seeks  one  man  and  leaves  an- 
other; but  through  its  blind  eyes  it  knows  when  the 
fire  of  God  has  fallen  on  a  human  life.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  the  strange  helpfulness  which  comes  into  a 
man  when  he  truly  is  converted.     It  is  not  new  truth 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD.  11 

that  he  knows,  not  new  wonders  that  he  can  do,  but 
it  is  that  the  unlighted  nature,  in  the  utter  obedience 
and  self-surrender  of  that  great  hour,  has  been  lifted  up 
and  lighted  at  the  life  of  God,  and  now  burns  with  Him. 
But  it  is  not  the  worst  thing  in  life  for  a  man  to  be 
powerless  or  uninfluential.  There  are  men  enough  for 
whom  we  would  thank  God  if  they  did  no  harm,  even 
if  they  did  no  good.  I  will  not  stop  now  to  question 
whether  there  be  such  a  thing  possible  as  a  life  totally 
without  influence  of  any  kind,  whether  perhaps  the  men 
of  whom  I  have  been  speaking  do  not  also  belong  to  the 
class  of  whom  I  want  next  to  speak.  However  that 
may  be,  I  am  sure  you  will  recognize  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  multitude  of  men  whose  lamps  are  certainly  not 
dark,  and  yet  who  certainly  are  not  the  candles  of  the 
Lord.  A  nature  furnished  richly  to  the  very  brim,  a 
man  of  knowledge,  of  wit,  of  skill,  of  thought,  with  the 
very  graces  of  the  body  perfect,  and  yet  profane,  im- 
pure, worldly,  and  scattering  scepticism  of  all  good  and 
truth  about  him  wherever  he  may  go.  His  is  no  un- 
lighted candle.  He  burns  so  bright  and  lurid  that  often 
the  purer  lights  grow  dim  in  the  glare.  But  if  it  be 
possible  for  the  human  candle,  when  it  is  all  made,  when 
the  subtle  components  of  a  human  nature  are  all  mingled 
most  carefully,  —  if  it  be  possible  that  then,  instead  of 
being  lifted  up  to  heaven  and  kindled  at  the  pure  being  { 
of  Him  who  is  eternally  and  absolutely  good,  it  should 
be  plunged  down  into  hell  and  lighted  at  the  yellow  / 
flames  that  bum  out  of  the  dreadful  brimstone  of  the 
pit,  then  we  can  understand  the  sight  of  a  man  who  is  / 
rich  in  every  brilliant  human  quality,  cursing  the  world 

with  the  continual  exhibition  of  the  devilish  instead  of 

I 


12  THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD. 

the  godlike  in  his  life.  When  the  power  of  pure  love 
appears  as  a  capacity  of  brutal  lust ;  when  the  holy  in- 
genuity with  which  man  may  search  the  character  of  a 
fellow-man,  that  he  may  help  him  to  be  his  best,  is 
turned  into  the  unholy  skill  with  which  the  bad  man 
studies  his  victim,  that  he  may  know  how  to  make  his 
damnation  most  complete ;  when  the  almost  divine 
magnetism,  which  is  given  to  a  man  in  order  that  he 
may  instil  his  faith  and  hope  into  some  soul  that  trusts 
him,  is  used  to  breathe  doubt  and  despair  through  all 
the  substance  of  a  friend's  reliant  soul ;  when  wit,  which 
ought  to  make  truth  beautiful,  is  deliberately  prostituted 
to  the  service  of  a  lie ;  when  earnestness  is  degraded  to 
be  the  slave  of  blasphemy,  and  the  slave's  reputation  is 
made  the  cloak  for  the  master's  shame,  —  in  all  these 
cases,  and  how  frequent  they  are  no  man  among  us  fails 
to  know,  you  have  simply  the  spirit  of  man  kindled 
from  below,  not  from  above,  the  candle  of  the  Lord 
burnino-  with  the  fire  of  the  devil.  StiU  it  will  burn ; 
still  the  native  inflammableness  of  humanity  will  show 
itself.  There  will  be  light ;  there  will  be  power ;  and 
men  who  want  nothing  but  light  and  power  will  come 
to  it.  It  is  wonderful  how  mere  power,  or  mere  bright- 
ness, apart  altogether  from  the  work  that  the  power  is 
doing  and  the  story  that  the  brightness  has  to  tell,  will 
win  the  confidence  and  admiration  of  men  from  whom 
we  might  have  expected  better  things.  A  bright  book 
or  a  bright  play  will  draw  the  crowd,  although  its 
meaning  be  detestable.  A  clever  man  will  make  a 
host  of  boys  and  men  stand  like  charmed  birds  while  he 
draws  their  principles  quietly  out  of  them  and  leaves 
them  moral  idiots.     A  whole  great  majority  of  a  com- 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD.  13 

inunity  will  rush  like  foolish  sheep  to  the  polls  and 
vote  for  a  man  who  they  know  is  false  and  brutal,  be- 
cause they  have  learned  to  say  that  he  is  strong.  All 
this  is  true  enough  ;  and  yet  while  men  do  these  wild 
and  foolish  things,  they  know  the  difference  between  the 
illumination  of  a  human  life  that  is  kindled  from  above 
and  that  which  is  kindled  from  below.  They  know  the 
pure  flames  of  one  and  the  lurid  glare  of  the  other  ;  and 
however  they  may  praise  and  follow  wit  and  power,  as 
if  to  be  witty  or  powerful  were  an  end  sufficient  in 
itself,  they  will  always  keep  their  sacredest  respect  and 
confidence  for  that  power  or  wit  which  is  inspired  by 
God,  and  works  for  righteousness. 

There  is  still  another  way,  more  subtle  and  sometimes 
more  dangerous  than  these,  in  which  the  spirit  of  man 
may  fail  of  its  completest  function  as  the  candle  of  the 
Lord.  The  lamp  may  be  lighted,  and  the  fire  at  which 
it  is  lighted  may  be  indeed  the  fire  of  God,  and  yet  it 
may  not  be  God  alone  who  shines  forth  upon  the  world. 
I  can  picture  to  myself  a  candle  which  should  in  some 
way  mingle  a  peculiarity  of  its  own  substance  with  the 
light  it  shed,  giving  to  that  light  a  hue  which  did  not 
belong  essentially  to  the  fire  at  which  it  was  lighted. 
Men  who  saw  it  would  see  not  only  the  brightness  of 
the  fire.  They  would  see  also  the  tone  and  color  of  the 
lamp.  And  so  it  is,  I  think,  with  the  way  in  which  some 
good  men  manifest  God.  They  have  really  kindled 
their  lives  at  Him.  It  is  His  fire  that  burns  in  them. 
They  are  obedient,  and  so  He  can  make  them  His 
points  of  exhibition  ;  but  they  cannot  get  rid  of  them- 
selves. They  are  mixed  with  the  God  they  show. 
They  show  themselves  as  well  as  Him.     It  is  as  when 


14  THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD. 

a  mirror  mingles  its  own  shape  with  the  reflections  of 
the  things  that  are  reflected  from  it,  and  gives  them  a 
curious  convexity  because  it  is  itself  convex.  This  is 
the  secret  of  all  pious  bigotry,  of  all  holy  prejudice.  It 
is  the  candle,  putting  its  own  color  into  the  flame  which 
it  has  borrowed  from  the  fire  of  God.  The  violent  man 
makes  God  seem  violent.  The  feeble  man  makes  God 
seem  feeble.  The  speculative  man  makes  God  look  like 
a  beautiful  dream.  The  legal  man  makes  God  look 
like  a  hard  and  steel-like  law.  Here  is  where  all  the 
harsh  and  narrow  part  of  sectarianism  comes  from. 
The  narrow  Presbyterian  or  Methodist,  or  Episcopalian 
or  Quaker,  full  of  devoutness,  really  afire  with  God,  — 
what  is  he  but  a  candle  which  is  always  giving  the 
flame  its  color,  and  which,  by  a  disposition  which  many 
men  have  to  value  the  little  parts  of  their  life  more  than 
the  greater,  makes  less  of  the  essential  brightness  of  the 
flame  than  of  the  special  color  which  it  lends  to  it  ?  It 
seems,  perhaps,  as  if,  in  saying  this,  I  threw  some  slight 
or  doubt  upon  that  individual  and  separate  element  in 
every  man's  religion,  on  which,  upon  the  contrary,  I 
place  the  very  highest  value.  Every  man  who  is  a 
Christian  must  live  a  Christian  life  that  is  peculiarly 
his  own.  Every  candle  of  the  Lord  must  utter  its  pe- 
culiar light ;  only  the  true  individuality  of  faith  is 
marked  by  these  characteristics  which  rescue  it  from 
bigotry :  first,  that  it  does  not  add  something  to  the 
universal  light,  but  only  brings  out  most  strongly  some 
aspect  of  it  which  is  specially  its  own ;  second,  that  it 
always  cares  more  about  the  essential  light  than  about 
the  peculiar  way  in  which  it  utters  it ;  and  third,  that 
it  easily  blends  with  other  special  utterances  of  the 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD,  15 

universal  light,  in  cordial  sympathy  and  recognition  of 
the  value  which  it  finds  in  them.  Let  these  character- 
istics be  in  every  man's  religion,  and  then  the  individu- 
ality of  faith  is  an  inestimable  gain.  Then  the  different 
candles  of  the  Lord  burn  in  long  rows  down  His  great 
palace-halls  of  the  world  ;  and  all  together,  each  comple- 
menting all  the  rest,  they  light  the  whole  vast  space 
with  Him. 

I  have  tried  to  depict  some  of  the  difficulties  which 
beset  the  full  exhibition  in  the  world  of  this  great  truth 
of  Solomon,  that  "  the  spirit  of  man  is  the  candle  of  the 
Lord."  Man  is  selfish  and  disobedient,  and  will  not  let 
his  life  burn  at  all.  Man  is  wilful  and  passionate,  and 
kindles  his  life  with  ungodly  fire.  Man  is  narrow  and 
bigoted,  and  makes  the  Light  of  God  shine  with  his  own 
special  color.  But  all  these  are  accidents.  All  these 
are  distortions  of  the  true  idea  of  man.  How  can  we 
know  that  ?  Here  is  the  perfect  man,  Christ  Jesus ! 
What  a  man  He  is  !  How  nobly,  beautifully,  perfectly 
human  I  "What  hands,  what  feet,  what  an  eye,  what  a 
heart !  How  genuinely,  unmistakably  a  man  !  I  bring 
the  men  of  my  experience  or  of  my  imagination  into 
His  presence,  and  behold,  just  when  the  worst  or  best 
of  them  falls  short  of  Him,  my  human  consciousness 
assures  me  that  they  fall  short  also  of  the  best  idea  of 
what  it  is  to  be  a  man.  Here  is  the  spirit  of  man  in 
its  perfection.  And  what  then  ?  Is  it  not  also  the 
candle  of  the  Lord  ?  "I  am  come  a  light  into  the 
world,"  said  Jesus.  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen 
the  Father."  "  In  Him  was  life  and  the  life  was  the 
light  of  men."  So  wrote  the  man  of  all  men  who  knew 
Him  best.     And  in  Him  where  are  the  difficulties  that 


16  THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD. 

we  saw  ?  where  for  one  moment  is  the  dimness  of  self- 
ishness ?  0,  it  seems  to  me  a  wonderful  thing  that  the 
supremely  rich  human  nature  of  Jesus  never  for  an  in- 
stant turned  with  self-indulgence  in  on  its  own  richness, 
or  was  beguiled  by  that  besetting  danger  of  all  opulent 
souls,  the  wish,  in  the  deepest  sense,  just  to  enjoy  him- 
self. How  fascinating  that  desire  is.  How  it  keeps 
many  and  many  of  the  most  abundant  natures  in  the 
world  from  usefulness.  Just  to  handle  over  and  over 
their  hidden  treasures,  and  with  a  spiritual  miserliness 
to  think  their  thought  for  the  pure  joy  of  thinking, 
and  turn  emotion  into  the  soft  atmosphere  of  a  life  of 
jiardened  selfishness.  Not  one  instant  of  that  in  Jesus. 
All  the  vast  richness  of  His  human  nature  only  meant 
for  Him  more  power  to  utter  God  to  man. 

And  yet  how  pure  His  rich  life  was.  How  it  ab- 
horred to  burn  with  any  fire  that  was  not  divine.  Such 
abundant  life,  and  yet  such  utter  incapacity  of  any  living 
but  the  holiest ;  such  power  of  burning,  and  yet  such 
utter  incapacity  of  being  kindled  by  any  torch  but  God's ; 
such  fulness  with  such  purity  was  never  seen  besides 
upon  the  earth  ;  and  yet  we  know  as  we  behold  it  that 
it  is  no  monster,  but  only  the  type  of  what  all  men  must 
be,  although  all  men  but  Him  as  yet  have  failed  to  be  it. 

And  yet  again  there  was  intense  personality  in  Him 
without  a  moment's  bigotry.  A  special  life,  a  life  that 
stands  distinct  and  self-defined  among  all  the  lives  of 
men,  and  yet  a  life  making  the  universal  God  all  the 
more  universally  manifest  by  its  distinctness,  appealing 
to  all  lives  just  in  proportion  to  the  intensity  of  the 
individuality  that  filled  His  own.  O,  I  think  I  need 
only  bid  you  look  at  Him,  and  you  must  see  what  it  is  to 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD.  17 

which  our  feeble  lights  are  struggling.  There  is  the  true 
spiritual  man  who  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord,  the  light 
that  lighteth  every  man. 

It  is  distinctly  a  new  idea  of  life,  new  to  the  standards 
of  all  our  ordinary  living,  which  this  truth  reveals.  All 
our  ordinary  appeals  to  men  to  be  up  and  doing, 
and  make  themselves  shining  lights,  fade  away  and 
become  insignificant  before  this  higher  message  which 
comes  in  the  words  of  Solomon  and  in  the  life  of  Jesus. 
What  does  the  higher  message  say  ?  "  You  are  a  part 
of  God  !  You  have  no  place  or  meaning  in  this  world 
but  in  relationship  to  Him.  The  full  relationship  can 
only  be  realized  by  obedience.  Be  obedient  to  Him, 
and  you  shall  shine  by  His  light,  not  your  own.  Then 
you  cannot  be  dark,  for  He  shall  kindle  you.  Then  you 
shall  be  as  incapable  of  burning  with  false  passion  as 
you  shall  be  quick  to  answer  with  the  true.  Then  the 
devil  may  hold  his  torch  to  you,  as  he  held  it  to  the 
heart  of  Jesus  in  the  desert,  and  your  heart  shall  be  as 
uninflammable  as  His.  But  as  soon  as  God  touches 
you,  you  shall  burn  with  a  light  so  truly  your  own  that 
you  shall  reverence  your  own  mysterious  life,  and  yet 
so  truly  His  that  pride  shall  be  impossible."  "What  a 
philosophy  of  human  life  is  that.  "  O,  to  be  nothing, 
nothing ! "  cries  the  mystic  singer  in  his  revival  hymn, 
desiring  to  lose  himself  in  God.  "  Nay  not  that ;  0  to 
be  something,  something,"  remonstrates  the  unmystical 
man,  longing  for  work,  ardent  for  personal  life  and  char- 
acter. Where  is  the  meeting  of  the  two  ?  How  shall 
self-surrender  meet  that  high  self-value  without  which 
no  man  can  justify  his  living  and  honor  himself  in  his 
humanity  ?     Where  can  they  meet  but  in  this  truth  ? 

2 


18  THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD, 

Man  must  be  something  that  he  may  be  nothing.  The 
something  which  he  must  be  must  consist  in  simple  fit- 
ness to  utter  the  divine  life  which  is  the  only  original 
power  in  the  universe.  And  then  man  must  be  nothing 
that  he  may  be  something.  He  must  submit  himself  in 
obedience  to  God,  that  so  God  may  use  him,  in  some 
way  in  which  his  special  nature  only  could  be  used,  to 
illuminate  and  help  the  world.  Tell  me,  do  not  the  two 
cries  meet  in  that  one  aspiration  of  the  Christian  man 
to  find  his  life  by  losing  it  in  God,  to  be  himseK  by 
being  not  his  own  but  Christ's  ? 

In  certain  lands,  for  certain  holy  ceremonies,  they 
prepare  the  caudles  with  most  anxious  care.  The  very 
bees  which  distil  the  wax  are  sacred.  They  range  in 
gardens  planted  with  sweet  flowers  for  their  use  alone. 
The  wax  is  gathered  by  consecrated  hands  ;  and  then  the 
shaping  of  the  candles  is  a  holy  task,  performed  in  holy 
places,  to  the  sound  of  hymns,  and  in  the  atmosphere  of 
prayers.  All  this  is  done  because  the  candles  are  to 
burn  in  the  most  lofty  ceremonies  on  most  sacred  days. 
With  what  care  must  the  man  be  made  whose  spirit  is 
to  be  the  candle  of  the  Lord !  It  is  his  >spirit  which 
God  is  to  kindle  with  Himself.  Therefore  the  spirit 
must  be  the  precious  part  of  him.  The  body  must  be 
valued  only  for  the  protection  and  the  education  which 
the  soul  may  gain  by  it.  And  the  power  by  which  his 
spirit  shaU  become  a  candle  is  obedience.  Therefore 
obedience  must  be  the  struggle  and  desire  of  his  life ; 
obedience,  not  hard  and  forced,  but  ready,  loving,  and 
spontaneous ;  the  obedience  of  the  child  to  the  father, 
of  the  candle  to  the  flame  ;  the  doing  of  duty  not 
merely  that  the  duty  may  be  done,  but  that  the  soul  in 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD.  19 

doing  it  may  become  capable  of  receiving  and  uttering 
God ;  the  bearing  of  pain  not  merely  because  the  pain 
must  be  borne,  but  that  the  bearing  of  it  may  make  the 
soul  able  to  burn  with  the  divine  fire  which  found  it  in 
the  furnace ;  the  repentance  of  sin  and  acceptance  of 
for(Tiveness,  not  merely  that  the  soul  may  be  saved  from 
the  fire  of  hell,  but  that  it  may  be  touched  with  the  fire 
of  heaven,  and  shine  with  the  love  of  G-od,  as  the  stars, 
forever. 

Above  all  the  pictures  of  life,  —  of  what  it  means,  of 
what  may  be  made  out  of  it,  —  there  stands  out  this  pict- 
ure of  a  human  spirit  burning  with  the  light  of  the  God 
whom  it  obeys,  and  showing  Him  to  other  men.  0, 
my  young  friends,  the  old  men  will  tell  you  that  the 
lower  pictures  of  life  and  its  purposes  turn  out  to  be 
cheats  and  mistakes.  But  this  picture  can  never  cheat 
the  soul  that  tries  to  realize  it.  The  man  whose  life  is 
a  struggle  after  such  obedience,  when  at  last  his  earthly 
task  is  over,  may  look  forward  from  the  borders  of  this 
life  into  the  other,  and  humbly  say,  as  his  history  of 
the  life  that  is  ended,  and  his  prayer  for  the  life  that  is 
to  come,  the  words  that  Jesus  said  —  "I  have  glorified 
Thee  on  the  earth ;  now,  O  Father,  glorify  Me  with 
Thyself  forever." 

[When  this  sermon  was  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey,  on  the 
evening  of  Sunday,  the  Fourth  of  July,  1880,  tlie  following  sentences 
were  added  :  — ] 

My  Friends,— May  I  ask  you  to  linger  while  I  say 
to  you  a  few  words  more,  which  shall  not  be  unsuited 
to  what  I  have  been  saying,  and  which  shall,  for  just  a 
moment,  recall  to  you  the  sacredness  which  this  day  — 
the  Fourth  of  July,  the  anniversary  of  American  Inde- 


20  THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LORD. 

pendence  —  has  in  the  hearts  of  us  Americans.  If  I 
dare  —  generously  permitted  as  I  am  to  stand  this  even- 
ing in  the  venerable  Abbey,  so  full  of  our  history  as 
well  as  yours  —  to  claim  that  our  festival  shall  have 
some  sacredness  for  you  as  well  as  us,  my  claim  rests 
on  the  simple  truth  that  to  all  true  men  the  birthday  of 
a  nation  must  always  be  a  sacred  thing.  For  in  our 
modern  thought  the  nation  is  the  making-place  of  men. 
Not  by  the  traditions  of  its  history,  nor  by  the  splendor 
of  its  corporate  achievements,  nor  by  the  abstract  excel- 
lencies of  its  constitution,  but  by  its  fitness  to  make 
men,  to  beget  and  educate  human  character,  to  contrib- 
ute to  the  complete  humanity,  the  "  perfect  man  "  that 
is  to  be,  —  by  this  alone  each  nation  must  be  judged 
to-day.  The  nations  are  the  golden  candlesticks  which 
hold  aloft  the  candles  of  the  Lord.  No  candlestick  can 
be  so  rich  or  venerable  that  men  shall  honor  it  if  it 
holds  no  candle.  "  Show  us  your  man,"  land  cries  to 
land. 

In  such  days  any  nation,  out  of  the  midst  of  which 
God  has  led  another  nation  as  He  led  ours  out  of  the 
midst  of  yours,  must  surely  watch  with  anxiety  and 
prayer  the  peculiar  development  of  our  common  human- 
ity of  which  that  new  nation  is  made  the  home,  the 
special  burning  of  the  human  candle  in  that  new  can- 
dlestick ;  and  if  she  sees  a  hope  and  promise  that  God 
means  to  build  in  that  new  land  some  strong  and  free 
and  characteristic  manhood  which  shall  help  the  world 
to  its  completeness,  the  mother-land  will  surely  lose  the 
thought  and  memory  of  whatever  anguish  accompanied 
the  birth,  for  gratitude  over  the  gain  which  humanity 
has  made,  "  for  joy  that  a  man  is  born  into  the  world." 


THE  CANDLE  OF  THE  LOED.  21 

It  is  not  for  me  to  glorify  to-night  the  country  which 
I  love  with  all  my  heart  and  soul.  I  may  not  ask  your 
praise  for  anything  admirable  which  the  United  States 
has  been  or  done.  But  on  my  country's  birthday  I  may 
do  something  far  more  solemn  and  more  worthy  of  the 
hour.  I  may  ask  you  for  your  prayer  in  her  behalf. 
That  on  the  manifold  and  wondrous  chance  which  God 
is  giving  her,  —  on  her  freedom  (for  she  is  free,  since 
the  old  stain  of  slavery  was  washed  out  in  blood) ;  on 
her  unconstrained  religious  life ;  on  her  passion  for 
education,  and  her  eager  search  for  truth ;  on  her  jealous 
care  for  the  poor  man's  rights  and  opportunities ;  on  her 
countless  quiet  homes  where  the  future  generations  of 
her  men  are  growing ;  on  her  manufactures  and  her  com- 
merce ;  on  her  wide  gates  open  to  the  east  and  to  the 
west ;  on  her  strange  meetings  of  the  races  out  of  which 
a  new  race  is  slowly  being  born ;  on  her  vast  enterprise 
and  her  illimitable  hopefulness,  —  on  all  these  materials 
and  machineries  of  manhood,  on  all  that  the  life  of  my 
country  must  mean  for  humanity,  I  may  ask  you  to 
pray  that  the  blessing  of  God  the  Father  of  man,  and 
Christ  the  Son  of  man,  may  rest  forever. 

Because  you  are  Englishmen  and  I  am  an  American ; 
also  because  here,  under  this  high  and  hospitable  roof 
of  God,  we  are  all  more  than  Englishmen  and  more  than 
Americans ;  because  we  are  all  men,  children  of  God, 
waiting  for  the  full  coming  of  our  Father's  kingdom,  I 
ask  you  for  that  prayer. 


It 

THE  JOY  OF  SELF-SACRIFICK 

"And  when  the  burnt  offering  began,  the  song  of  the  Lord  began  alsC 
with  the  trumpets. "  — 2  Chron.  xxix.  27. 

It  had  been  a  day  of  joy  and  triumph  in  Jerusalem. 
Hezekiah,  the  king,  reviving  the  faith  and  worship  of 
Jehovah,  from  which  his  fathers  had  departed,  had 
opened  the  doors  of  the  temple  and  cleared  out  all  the 
rubbish  of  the  long  neglect,  and  gathered  the  priests 
and  lighted  the  lamps  and  summoned  the  people,  and 
to-day  there  had  been  a  vast  sacrifice  to  the  Lord,  in 
which  the  people  had  once  more  declared  themselves 
His  servants,  and  given  up  again  their  personal  and 
national  life  to  Him.  The  burnt  offering  declared  their 
penitence  and  consecration.  It  was  the  nation's  solemn 
sacrifice  of  itself  to  God.  The  verse  which  I  have 
quoted  tells  us  one  thing  about  this  sacrifice.  It  records 
the  joy  with  which  it  was  made  —  "When  the  burnt 
offering  began,  the  song  of  the  Lord  began  with  the 
trumpets."  Not  in  a  gloomy  silence,  as  if  the  people 
were  doing  a  hard  duty  which  they  would  not  do  if 
they  could  help  it,  did  the  smoke  of  their  offering 
ascend  to  God  ;  but  with  a  burst  of  jubilant  music 
and  with  a  song  of  triumphant  joy  which  rang  down 
through  the  crowded  courts,  the  host  of  the  Jews 
claimed  for  themselves  anew  their  place  in  the  obedi- 


THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE.  23 

ence  of  God,  The  act  of  sacrifice  was  done  amid  a 
chorus  of  delight. 

The  old  sacrifices  are  past  and  done  forever.  There 
are  no  more  smoking  altars  or  bleeding  beasts ;  but  that 
which  they  represented  still  remains,  and  will  remain 
so  long  as  man  and  God  are  child  and  Father  to  each 
other.  The  giving  up  of  the  life  of  man  away  from 
himself  to  serve  his  true  and  rightful  Master,  the  sur- 
render of  his  life  to  another,  self-sacrifice,  which  is  what 
these  burnt  ofi'erings  picturesquely  represented,  is  uni- 
versally and  perpetually  necessary.  As  we  study  the 
old  ceremony,  that  which  it  represented  stands  before 
us ;  and  one  question  which  comes  up,  the  question 
which  I  want  to  make  the  subject  of  my  sermon  for 
this  morning,  is  that  which  is  suggested  by  the  verse 
in  the  old  book  of  Chronicles,  in  which  the  rejoicing 
of  the  people  over  their  burnt  offering  is  written.  It 
is  not  beasts,  but  lives  that  we  offer.  Can  the  life, 
too,  be  offered  now  as  the  beast  was  offered  of  old, 
with  song  and  trumpet  ?  Can  self-sacrifice  be  a  thing 
of  triumph  and  exhilaration  ?  Can  it  be  the  conscious 
glorification  of  a  life  to  give  that  life  away  in  self-de- 
nial ?  The  joy  and  glory  of  self-sacrifice  shall  be  our 
subject. 

You  know  how  strangely  such  a  subject  must  sound 
even  to  many  very  good  and  conscientious  people. 
Multitudes  of  people  there  are  all  about  us,  who  thor- 
oughly accept  it  as  the  great  law  and  necessity  of 
human  life  that  there  must  be  self-sacrifice.  It  is  not 
only  that  they  have  been  taught  it  from  their  earliest 
youth  ;  not  merely  that  they  find  it  written  in  what  are 
recognized  as  the  highest  codes  of  human  living;  but 


24  THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

their  own  experience  and  their  own  hearts  have  taught 
it  to  them.  They  see  that  the  world  would  be  a  dread- 
ful and  intolerable  place  if  every  creature  in  it  lived 
only  for  his  own  mere  immediate  indulgence.  They  own 
that  the  higher  nature  and  the  higher  purpose  every- 
where have  a  right  to  the  submission  of  the  lower,  and 
they  freely  accept  the  conviction  that  the  lower  must 
submit.  The  different  forms  of  self-sacrifice  stand 
around  them  with  their  demands.  There  is  the  need 
that  a  man  should  sacrifice  himself  to  himself,  his  lower 
self  to  his  higher  self,  his  passions  to  his  principles. 
There  is  the  need  of  sacrificing  one's  self  for  fellow-men. 
There  is  tlie  highest  need  of  all,  the  need  of  giving  up 
our  will  to  God's.  All  of  these  needs  a  man  will  own 
and  honor.  He  will  try  to  meet  them  all  his  life.  But 
when  you  come  to  talk  of  joy  in  meeting  them,  that  is 
another  matter.  Self-sacrifice  seems  to  him  something 
apart  from  the  whole  notion  of  enjoyment.  It  is  a  dis- 
agreeable necessity  of  life.  It  seems  to  be  tied  on  to 
life  by  some  strange  fate,  as  if  it  were  the  result  of  some 
terrible  mistake.  Perhaps  the  man  is  able  to  recognize 
that  tlie  necessity  is  made  use  of  for  some  purposes  of 
education,  and  so  is  not  wholly  unthankful  that  the 
necessity  exists ;  but  to  rejoice  over  it,  to  give  up  our 
own  will,  to  sacrifice  our  pleasure  and  take  up  our  task 
with  a  song,  —  that  is  something  which  most  men,  even 
those  who  work  on  most  scrupulously  at  their  duty 
cannot  comprehend.  "  I  know  it  is  my  duty  because  I 
hate  it  so,"  somebody  said  to  me  once  about  some  task. 
That  is  the  look  of  duty  to  multitudes  of  men.  The 
highest  dream  of  the  poet  is  of  a  state  of  things  in 
which   we   shall    know  that  something    is    our  dut^ 


THE   JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE.  25 

because  we  love  it  so  ;  the  condition  in  which  "  love  is 
an  unerring  light  and  joy  its  own  secarity."  That  con- 
dition, in  whatever  region  of  the  universe  the  soul 
attained  to  it,  would  be  heaven ;  and  yet  it  would  be 
only  the  realization  and  completion  of  that  which  was 
set  forth  in  the  old  ceremony  of  the  book  of  Chronicles, 
in  which  the  sacrifice  was  greeted  with  the  blast  of  the 
trumpets  and  the  songs  of  the  people. 

Heaven  seems  impossible,  and  yet  there  are  prom- 
ises and  prophecies  of  heaven  on  every  side  of  us. 
There  are  always  glimpses  of  man's  highest  life  which 
show  us,  like  the  first  streaks  of  light  before  the  dawn, 
what  it  would  be  if  all  the  sky  were  filled  with  glory ; 
and  so  there  are  always  exalted  lives,  and  exalted 
moments  in  the  lives,  I  hope,  of  all  of  us,  in  which  we 
do  catch  sight  of  the  joy  and  glory  of  self-sacrifice. 
Not  many  years  ago,  when  the  young  men  went  to  the 
war,  was  it  not  true  that  the  fact  of  sacrifice  intensified 
the  joy  ?  It  was  a  joy  to  save  their  country,  to  feel 
sure,  as  it  is  not  often  given  to  men  vividly  to  feel,  that 
they  were  doing  a  real  and  valuable  part  of  her  salva- 
tion. But  tell  me,  what  made  the  difference  between 
their  going  and  the  patient  plodding  of  the  clerk  up  to 
the  State  House,  or  the  quiet  journey  of  the  congress- 
man to  Washington  to-day  ?  They  too,  if  they  are 
honest  and  faithful,  are  saving  the  country  just  as  truly 
as  the  soldiers  were.  Why  does  the  one  trudge  the 
streets  unnoticed,  while  before  the  others  trumpets 
blew,  and  around  them  the  crowd  shouted,  and  in  their 
bosoms  their  hearts  leaped  for  joy  ?  It  is  easy  to  say 
that  it  was  the  poetry,  the  romance,  the  enthusiasm. 
Those  are  mere  words.     Tlie  essence  of  it  was  that  in 


26  THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

their  going  the  self-sacrifice  was  vivid  and  distinct. 
They  were  leaving  home  and  friends  and  safety  and 
comfort.  Ah,  you  are  very  young,  too  young  to  remem- 
ber the  spirit  of  those  days,  if  you  do  not  know  that 
that  self-sacrifice  was  not  a  drawback  on  the  joy  of  the 
truest  men's  enlistment ;  it  was  a  part  and  parcel  of 
that  joy.  No  safe  and  easy  task  could  ever  have  filled 
the  heart  with  such  a  sober  and  deep  delight. 

Or  think  about  a  man  who  does  something  which 
you  choose  to  call  a  piece  of  superfluous  mercantile 
honesty,  but  something  which,  under  the  higher  compul- 
sions that  press  upon  his  loftier  nature,  he  thinks  that  it 
is  absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  do.  He  has  failed  in 
business  and  he  has  settled  with  his  creditors ;  and  they 
are  satisfied  with  what  they  have  got  from  him,  and 
give  him  a  full  discharge  from  all  his  obligations  ;  and 
by  and  by  the  man  succeeds  again  and  then,  as  he 
begins  to  grow  rich  once  more,  he  takes  upon  himself 
the  payment,  principal  and  interest,  of  his  old  debts. 
He  lives  like  a  poor  man  still.  He  will  not  let  his  life 
grow  sumptuous  till  first  it  has  gro-wnn  honest.  Do  you 
say,  "  What  a  slavery  !  What  a  tyrant  his  conscience 
is  to  him  ! "  But  to  him  it  is  the  most  enthusiastic 
freedom.  He  goes  his  way  with  his  heart  making 
music  to  him  all  the  day  long,  and  following  his 
conscience  as  no  most  devoted  soldier  ever  followed  his 
half-worshipped  captain.  Every  time  that  another 
comfort  is  laid  upon  the  altar  of  his  honesty,  the  song 
of  the  Lord  begins  with  the  trumpets.  There  may  be 
in  it  some  mixture  of  unworthy  pride  ;  but,  if  there  is, 
it  is  an  alloy  and  not  a  refinement,  a  decrease  and  not 
an  increase  of  the  joy.     It  makes  it  nervous,  restless. 


THE   JOY   OF   SELF-SACKIFICK  27 

and  impatient.  But  leave  that  out.  Let  the  man 
simply  want  to  be  honest,  and  then  the  self-sacrifice,  by 
which  alone  his  honesty  can  be  done,  is  a  true  element 
in  his  delight.  He  is  happier  in  his  slow  payment 
of  his  self-recognized  debt,  in  which  each  dollar  that 
he  pays  means  some  distinct  piece  of  self-sacrifice, 
than  he  could  be  if  boundless  wealth  had  suddenly 
tumbled  upon  him  from  the  skies,  of  which  he,  without 
an  effort,  had  easily  handed  over  a  little  fragment  to  his 
creditors. 

The  words  of  our  text  then,  however  strangely  they 
sound  at  first,  are  literally  true  as  the  history  of  many  a 
man's  life.  Many  and  many  a  man  has  gone  on  year 
after  year,  with  little  or  no  zest  in  his  existence, 
perfectly  self-indulgent,  seeing  no  need,  hearing  no  call 
to  be  anything  else  than  self-indulgent,  until  at  last 
there  came  some  change  which  seemed  at  first  to  be  a 
terrible  misfortune,  something  which  threw  the  whole 
heavy  weight  of  other  people's  lives  upon  the  shoulders 
of  this  one  life,  so  that  it  had  to  forget  itself  and  live 
completely  for  these  others.  And  then  how  can  you  tell 
the  story  of  the  difference  which  came  into  that 
burdened  life  ?  What  words  can  tell  it  more  perfectly 
than  these,  "  When  the  burnt  offering  began,  the  song 
of  the  Lord  began  also  with  the  trumpets  "  ?  From  the 
moment  that  it  began  to  live  for  other  people,  this 
nature,  which  had  had  no  song  in  it  before,  became 
jubilant  with  music.  The  young  self-indulgent  man 
becomes  the  head  of  a  family  that  taxes  his  thought  by 
day  and  night.  The  merely  selfish  thinker,  who  has 
worked  out  his  thoughts  for  the  mere  luxury  of  think- 
ing, suddenly  finds  the  world  calling  for  him  to  plunge 


28  THE  JOY   OF  SELF-SACRIFICK 

into  the  detail  of  some  work  of  charity  or  education. 
Anything  comes  which  makes  a  man  take  up  his  life  as 
it  were  in  his  two  hands  and  give  it  away  to  be  thence- 
forth lived  not  for  himself  but  for  others,  who,  he  has  to 
acknowledge,  have  a  better  right  to  it,  the  right  of  an 
imperious  need.  At  first  there  is  reluctance,  hesitation. 
The  teeth  are  set.  The  hands  are  clenched.  The  eyes 
look  back  as  if  they  were  leaving  all  the  happiness  of 
life  behind  them.  But  ask  the  man  a  few  years  later ; 
nay,  look  at  him  after  he  has  thoroughly  lost  himself  in 
his  new  work,  and  when  you  see  what  life  has  come  to 
be  to  him,  what  spring  there  is  in  every  movement, 
what  sparkle  in  every  thought,  what  eagerness,  what 
interest,  what  hope  ;  is  it  not  clear  that  just  that  which 
has  come  to  him,  just  the  abandonment  of  selfishness 
and  some  strong  impulsive  giving  of  himself  away  to 
other  people,  was  what  was  needed  to  fill  all  the  accum- 
ulations of  his  life  with  joy,  and  to  clothe  all  the  quali- 
ties of  his  character  with  glory  ? 

As  one  looks  round  upon  the  community  to-day,  how 
clear  the  problem  of  hundreds  of  unhappy  lives  appears. 
Do  we  not  all  know  men  for  whom  it  is  just  as  clear  as 
daylight  that  that  is  what  they  need,  the  sacrifice  of 
themselves  for  other  people  ?  Eich  men  who  with  all 
their  wealth  are  weary  and  wretched ;  learned  men 
whose  learning  only  makes  them  querulous  and  jealous  ; 
believing  men  whose  faith  is  always  souring  into 
bigotry  and  envy,  —  every  man  knows  what  these  men 
need  ;  just  something  which  shall  make  them  let  them- 
selves go  out  into  the  open  ocean  of  a  complete  self- 
sacrifice.  They  are  rubbing  and  fretting  and  chafing 
themselves  against  the  wooden  wharves  of  their  own 


THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE.  29 

interests  to  which  they  are  tied.  Sometime  or  other 
a  great,  slow,  quiet  tide,  or  a  great,  strong,  furious  storm, 
must  come  and  break  every  rope  that  binds  them,  and 
carry  them  clear  out  to  sea;  and  then  they  will  for 
the  first  time  know  the  true,  manly  joy  for  which  a  man 
was  made,  as  a  ship  for  the  first  time  knows  the  full  joy 
for  which  a  ship  was  made,  when  she  trusts  herself  to 
the  open  sea  and,  with  the  wharf  left  far  behind,  feels 
the  winds  over  her  and  the  waters  under  her,  and  recog- 
nizes  her  true  life.  Only,  the  trust  to  the  great  ocean 
must  be  complete.  No  trial  trip  will  do.  No  ship  can 
tempt  the  sea  and  learn  its  glory,  so  long  as  she  goes 
moored  by  any  rope,  however  long,  by  which  she  means 
to  be  drawn  back  again  if  the  sea  grows  too  rough. 
The  soul  that  trifles  and  toys  with  self-sacrifice  never 
can  get  its  true  joy  and  power.  Only  the  soul  that 
with  an  overwhelming  impulse  and  a  perfect  trust  gives 
itself  up  forever  to  the  life  of  other  men,  finds  the 
delight  and  peace  which  such  complete  self-surrender 
has  to  give. 

One  would  not  seem  to  be  so  foolish  as  to  say  that 
self-sacrifice  does  not  bring  pain.  Indeed  it  does.  The 
life  of  Christ  must  be  our  teacher  there.  He  carried  the 
song  and  the  trumpet  always  in  his  heart.  That  life, 
marking  its  way  with  drops  of  blood,  on  which  the  pity 
of  the  world  has  dwelt  more  tenderly  than  over  any 
other  life  it  knows,  has  yet  always  seemed  to  the  world's 
best  standards  to  be  a  true  triumphal  march,  radiant 
with  splendor  all  along  the  way,  and  closing  in  a  true 
victory  at  last.  Indeed  I  think  that  one  of  the  bright- 
est insights  which  we  ever  get  into  the  human  heart  and 
its  essential  breadth  and  justice,  and  its  power,  when  it 


30  THE   JOY  OF   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

is  working  at  its  best,  to  hold  what  seem  contradictory 
ideas  in  their  true  spiritual  harmony,  is  given  to  us 
when  we  see  how  men  have  been  able  to  see  together 
both  sides  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  to  pity  His  sorrow  and  to 
glory  in  His  happiness,  and  yet  to  blend  both  of  these 
two  thoughts  of  Him  into  one  single  idea  of  one  single 
self-consistent  Christ.  It  is  a  sort  of  witness  of  how 
truly  men,  in  that  highest  mood  into  which  they  are 
drawn  when  they  try  to  study  Christ,  easily  see  the 
real  truth  with  regard  to  human  life,  which  is  that  in  it 
joy  and  pain,  so  far  from  being  inconsistent  with  and 
contradictory  to  one  another,  are,  in  some  true  sense, 
each  others'  complements,  and  neither  alone,  but  both 
together,  make  the  true  sum  of  human  life.  There  is  a 
conceivable  world  where  pure,  unclouded  joy  can  come, 
just  as  there  are  countries  where  the  mountains  are  very 
lofty  and  all  nature  is  on  so  grand  a  scale  that  it  can 
bear  a  pure,  unclouded  sky,  and  in  its  unveiled  splendor 
perfectly  satisfy  the  eye.  But  there  are  other  lands 
whose  inferior  grandeur  needs  for  its  perfect  beauty  the 
effects  of  mist  and  cloud  that  give  its  lower  mountains 
the  mystery  and  poetry  which  they  could  not  have  in 
themselves.  So  one  may  compare  the  Swiss  and  the 
Scotch  landscapes.  And  something  of  the  same  sort  is 
true  about  this  world  and  marks  its  inferiority,  proves 
that  it  is  not  yet  the  perfect  state  of  being.  It  needs 
the  pain  of  life  to  emphasize  its  joy.  Its  joy  is  not 
high  or  perfect  enough  to  do  without  the  emphasis  of 
pain.  And  so,  to  come  back  to  the  point  whence  we 
digressed,  it  is  not  strange  that  that  which  is  the  neces- 
sary condition  of  joy  in  this  human  life  —  namely,  self- 
sacrifice  —  should  be  also  inevitably  associated  with 
suffering  and  pain. 


THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE.  31 

There  is  another  reason  why  it  would  seem  to  be  ab- 
solutely necessary  that  man  should  have  the  power  of 
tinding  pleasure  in  his  sell-sacrifices,  in  the  actual  ful- 
tilnieut  of  his  compelled  tasks,  the  actual  doing  of  the 
necessary  duties  of  his  life,  and  that  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  joy  or  delight  in  what  we  are  doing  is  not  a 
mere  luxury ;  it  is  a  means,  a  help  for  the  more  perfect 
doing  of  our  work.  Indeed  it  may  be  truly  said  that 
no  man  does  any  work  perfectly  who  does  not  enjoy  his 
work  Joy  in  one's  work  is  the  consummate  tool  with- 
out which  the  work  may  be  done  indeed,  but  without 
which  the  work  will  always  be  done  slowly,  clumsily, 
and  without  its  finest  perfectness.  Men  who  do  their 
work  without  enjoying  it  are  like  men  carving  statues 
with  hatchets.  The  statue  gets  carved  perhaps,  and  is 
a  monument  forever  of  the  dogged  perseverance  of  the 
artist ;  but  there  is  a  perpetual  waste  of  toil,  and  there 
is  no  tine  result  in  the  end.  A  man  who  does  his  work 
with  thorough  enjoyment  of  it  is  like  an  artist  who 
holds  an  exquisite  tool  which  is  almost  as  obedient  to 
him  as  his  own  hand,  and  seems  to  understand  what  he 
is  doing,  and  almost  works  intelligently  with  him.  If 
the  only  loss  of  a  man  who  hates  his  work  were  the 
mere  loss  of  the  luxury  of  enjoying  it,  that  would  be 
bad ;  but  if,  in  the  loss  of  the  enjoyment  of  his  work, 
he  loses  a  large  part  of  the  power  for  the  most  effective 
doing  of  his  work,  then  it  is  a  matter  far  more  serious. 
I  passed,  the  other  day,  a  pawn-broker's  shop  in  an  ob- 
scure street  here  in  our  city.  Its  windows  showed  the 
usual  shabby  and  wretched  refuse  which  belongs  to 
such  places,  that  sort  of  battered  and  broken  driftwood 
which  the  tide  of  human  energy  and  hope  and  success 


32  THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

has  left  stranded  on  the  beach  when  it  has  ebbed  out  to 
sea.  But  one  window  was  a  great  deal  sadder  than  the 
other.  In  the  first  window  there  were  tawdry  and  faded 
trinkets,  old  jewelry  and  bits  of  cheap  personal  finery, 
which  poverty  had  confiscated  from  their  desperate  or 
careless  owners ;  but  in  the  other  window  there  were 
piles  of  workmen's  tools  —  hammers  and  saws  and  planes 
and  files  and  axes  —  the  things  with  which  men  do 
their  work  and  earn  their  living.  That  was  the  sadder 
window  of  the  two.  To  lose  a  trinket  is  mortification 
and  disappointment,  but  to  lose  a  tool  may  be  ruin. 
And  so  if  joy  in  work  were  a  mere  polish  and  decora- 
tion of  life,  it  would  be  sad  that  man  should  not  have 
it ;  but  if  it  is  the  means  by  which  alone  the  work  of 
life  may  be  effectively  and  nobly  done,  then  its  loss 
may  be  the  very  loss  of  life  itself 

I  think  we  want  to  urge  most  strenuously  upon 
young  men  the  need,  the  absolute  necessity,  that  in  the 
appointed  and  demanded  work  of  their  life  they  should 
look  for  and  should  find  the  joy  of  their  life.  To  do 
your  work  because  you  must ;  to  do  your  work  as  a 
slavery ;  and  then,  having  got  it  done  as  speedily  and 
easily  as  possible,  to  look  somewhere  else  for  enjoyment, 
—  that  makes  a  very  dreary  life.  No  man  who  works  so 
does  the  best  work.  No  man  who  works  so  lingers 
lovingly  over  his  work  and  asks  himself  if  there  is  not 
something  he  can  do  to  make  it  more  perfect.  "My 
meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me,  and  to 
finish  His  work,"  said  Jesus.  No  doubt  it  was  the 
intrinsic  nobleness  of  His  special  work  that  made  it 
peculiarly  abundant  in  the  enjoyment  which  it  fur- 
nished Him ;  and  no  doubt  any  young  man  who  has  the 


THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACKIFICE.  33 

choice  of  several  occupations  ought  to  choose  that 
which  is  intrinsically  highest,  that  which  is  occupied 
with  the  noblest  things.  This  indeed  is  what  makes 
some  professions  more  liberal  than  others,  —  the  greater 
power  which  they  have  to  satisfy  and  cultivate  the  na- 
ture of  the  men  who  live  in  them ;  but  our  counsel 
must  not  be  confined  to  them.  To  any  man  engaged  in 
any  honest,  useful  work,  we  want  to  say:  Try  just  as 
far  as  possible  to  find  the  pleasure  of  your  life  in  the 
work  to  which  it  has  been  settled  that  your  life  must 
be  given.  Study  its  principles.  Let  your  interest 
dwell  on  its  details.  Make  it  delightful  by  the  affec- 
tions which  cluster  round  it,  by  the  help  which  you 
are  able  through  it  to  give  to  other  people,  by  the  edu- 
cation which  your  own  faculties  are  getting  out  of  it. 
In  all  these  ways  make  your  business  the  centre  and 
fountain  of  your  joy,  and  then  life  will  be  healthy  and 
strong.  Then  you  will  not  be  running  everywhere  to 
find  some  outside  pleasure  which  shall  make  up  to  you 
for  your  self-sacrificing  toil ;  but  the  scenes  of  your  self- 
sacrificing  toil  itself,  your  store  or  your  office  or  your 
work-bench,  shall  be  bright  with  associations  of  delight, 
and  vocal  with  your  thankfulness  to  the  God  who  has 
given  you,  in  them,  the  most  radiant  revelations  of 
Himself  This  is  the  only  true  transfiguration  and  suc- 
cess of  labor  and  of  life. 

And  now,  what  is  to  be  done  about  all  this  ?  Men 
say,  "  0,  yes,  it  is  easy  to  talk  about  finding  your  joy  in 
your  self-sacrifice  and  work ;  but  I  have  tried  it,  and 
it  cannot  be  done.  Self-sacrifice  is  dreadful  and  unnat- 
ural. We  know  that  we  cannot  escape  it ;  but  there  is 
no  joy  in  it.     The  only  thing  to  do  is  to  get  through 

3 


34  THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

with  it  as  doggedly  and  speedily  as  possible,  and  then 
go  off  and  in  some  self-indulgence  find  the  real  pleasure 
of  your  life."  But  surely  that  is  shallow,  superficial 
talk.  To  talk  so  is  to  take  for  gxanted  that  self-sacrifice 
is  one  invariable  thing,  and  not  to  see  that  it  is  infinitely 
various  according  to  the  difference  of  the  men  who  make 
the  sacrifice,  and  the  difference  of  their  relations  to  the 
thing  for  which  the  sacrifice  is  made.  Understand  this 
and  then  the  difficulty  disappears.  Is  the  sacrifice 
which  the  most  scrupulous  and  faithful  servant  makes 
for  a  child  the  same  thing  as  the  sacrifice  which  the 
loving  mother  makes  for  him  ?  Is  the  self-sacrifice  of 
the  hired  mercenary  the  same  thing  as  the  sacrifice  of 
the  enthusiastic  patriot  ?  There  is  the  key  to  the  whole 
truth.  If  you  can  change  a  man's  relation  to  the  thing 
or  the  person  for  whom  he  makes  his  sacrifice,  you  may 
change  the  whole  character  of  the  sacrifice  itself ;  and 
you  may  open  in  it  fountains  of  delight  which  would 
have  seemed  before  to  be  impossible.  Nothing  less 
deep  than  that  will  answer.  You  cannot  go  to  men  to 
whom  self-sacrifice  is  misery  or  drudgery,  and  exhort 
them  to  be  happy,  and  tell  them  and  bid  them  believe 
that  self-sacrifice  is  joy.  That  is  treating  them  like 
children.  That  is  merely  beating  a  drum  before  them 
at  their  work,  and  asking  them  to  make  believe  that 
work  is  play.  Nor  can  you  trust  to  mere  animal  spirits, 
and  that  happy  temperament  which  will  let  some  people 
find  joy  in  life  in  spite  of  any  sacrifices  that  they  are 
called  to  make.  You  must  have  something  a  great  deal 
realler,  deeper,  and  more  universal  than  either  of  these ; 
and  that  can  be  nothing  short  of  such  a  relation  of  a 
man  to  the  object  of  his  sacrifice,  such  an  honor  for  it, 


THE  JOY  OF  SELF-SACRIFICE.  35 

such  a  sense  of  its  dignity,  such  a  sight  of  its  possi- 
bilities, as  will  make  it  a  delight  to  give  one's  seK  up  to 
it,  and  will  make  every  pain  that  is  involved  in  such 
surrender  a  welcome  emphasis  upon  his  value  and 
honor  for  it,  and  so  an  increase  of  his  joy.  Earlier  in 
this  sermon  I  spoke  of  the  three  great  classes  into  which 
all  the  sacrifices  which  men  are  called  upon  to  make 
may  really  be  divided.  There  are  the  sacrifices  which 
a  man  makes  of  himself  to  himself,  of  his  lower  nature 
and  needs  to  his  higher  nature  and  needs  ;  there  are  the 
sacrifices  wliich  he  makes  for  his  feUow-men  ;  and  there 
are  the  sacrifices  which  he  makes  for  God.  In  these 
three  services  the  world  of  conscientious  men  lives  and 
works.  And  very  often  these  services  are  bondages. 
Very  often  the  world  groans  bitterly  under  these  bur- 
dens which  it  will  not  cast  away,  and  yet  which  press 
very  heavily  upon  its  shoulders.  Can  anything  relieve 
all  that  ?  Suppose  that  some  new  power,  some  new 
revelation  or  new  fact,  should  come  into  the  world,  which 
should  change  a  man's  relation  to  his  own  self,  and  to 
his  fellow-men,  and  to  God.  Then  everything  would 
certainly  be  altered.  Let  some  new  light  shine  forth, 
within  whose  radiance  man  should  see  his  own  spiritual 
self  in  all  its  possibilities  ;  and  see  his  brethren  with 
their  souls,  and  all  that  their  souls  might  become,  burn- 
ing and  glowing  through  their  coarse,  dull  bodies ;  and 
see  God  as  the  dear  Father  and  glorious  centre  of  the 
world  ;  —  let  all  this  come,  and  then  the  impossible  may 
surely  become  possible,  and  the  self-sacrifice  for  things 
so  glorious,  while  it  does  not  lose  its  pain,  may  find 
within  its  pain  a  joy  of  which  its  pain  shall  be  myste- 
riously a  part.     And,  0  my  friends,  the  truth  of  these 


36  THE  JOY   OF  SELF-SACEIFICE, 

days,  the  truth  of  this  week,  is  that  such  a  light  has 
slioue  and  is  forever  shining  on  the  earth.  "  The  time 
draws  near  the  buth  of  Christ."  This  coming  week  is 
rich  with  Christmas  glory.  The  thing  that  makes  it 
glorious,  the  only  thing  that  can  give  dignity  to  all  this 
annual  outbreak  of  thankfulness  and  joy,  is  that  the 
Christmas  days  are  full  of  the  truth  of  Christ's  redemp- 
tion of  the  world.  Christ's  redemption  of  the  world 
means,  for  each  man  who  truly  believes  in  it,  just  these 
three  things :  the  revelation  to  the  man  of  his  own 
value,  and  of  the  value  of  his  feUow-man,  and  of  the 
dearness  and  greatness  of  God.  The  man  who  has  de- 
spised himself  and  thought  his  life  not  worth  the  living, 
learns  that  this  human  nature  of  his  is  capable  of  being 
inhabited  by  divinity,  and  sees  in  the  cross  of  the  Son 
of  God  what  God  thinks  is  the  preciousness  of  his 
human  soul.  Must  not  that  man  then  stand  in  awe 
before  himself,  and  rejoice  if,  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  ap- 
petites, he  can  help  this  regal  soul  to  its  completeness  ? 
The  man  who  has  despised  his  fellow-men  and  asked 
himself,  "  Why  should  I  give  up  my  pleasure  for  their 
pleasure,  or  even  for  their  good  ?  "  sees  in  the  redemp- 
tion how  Christ  values  these  lives,  and  is  not  so  much 
shamed  out  of  his  contempt  for  them  as  drawn  freely 
forward  into  the  precious  privilege  of  honoring  them 
and  working  for  them.  The  man  whose  God  has  been 
far  off  and  cold  sees  God  in  Christ,  and  loves  Him  with 
a  love  which  makes  life  seem  worth  the  living,  simply 
that  it  may  be  devoted  to  work  for  Him.  This  is  the 
power  of  Christ's  redemption.  It  transfigures  to  a  man 
his  own  soul  and  his  brethren  and  God ;  and,  seeing 
them  in  the  new  light  of  Christ,  the  man  lifts  up  his 


THE  JOY  OF   SELF-SACRIFICE.  37 

head,  and  his  old  tasks  are  altered.  To  work  for  such 
masters  becomes  the  glory  of  his  life.  Not  how  he  may 
do  as  little  work  as  possible,  and  then  escape  to  find  his 
pleasure  in  some  region  of  self-indulgence ;  but  how  he 
may  do  as  much  work  as  possible,  because  in  work  for 
such  masters  is  the  seat  and  fountain  of  his  joy,  becomes 
the  problem  of  his  life.  To  be  shut  out  from  any  chance 
of  signifying  by  self-sacrifice  in  their  behalf  his  value 
and  honor  for  these  masters,  would  make  his  life  seem 
very  worthless.  When  a  new  chance  to  put  his  passions 
down  that  he  may  win  character,  or  to  give  up  some 
pleasure  of  his  own  out  of  the  wish  to  honor  his  brother 
man  and  help  him,  or  to  sacrifice  his  own  will  to  the 
will  of  God,  —  when  such  a  chance  is  seen  coming 
towards  him  in  tlie  distance,  it  is  not,  as  it  used  to  be, 
as  if  the  culprit  saw  the  executioner  approaching  him 
with  the  sword  all  drawn  to  take  his  life.  Rather  it  is 
as  if  the  born  king,  who  had  just  discovered  his  royal 
lineage,  saw  the  priest  coming  towards  him  with  the 
crown  which  was  to  be  put  upon  his  head  and  make  him 
thoroughly  and  manifestly  king.  He  claims  his  self- 
sacrifice.  It  is  the  badge  and  means  of  his  enthrone- 
ment. And  when  he  takes  it ;  when  he  enters,  for  his 
own  soul's  good,  or  for  the  help  of  his  fellow-men,  or  for 
the  glory  of  his  God,  upon  some  path  which  men  call 
very  dark,  or  some  work  which  men  call  very  hard ;  it 
is  with  a  leap  of  heart  as  if  now  at  last  the  king  had 
found  his  own.  When  his  burnt  offering  begins,  his 
song  of  the  Lord  begins  also  with  the  trumpets. 

It  is  a  wondrous  change.  The  man  who  really  lives 
in  the  world  of  Christ's  redemption,  claims  his  self- 
sacrifices.     He  goes  up  to  his  martyrdom  with  a  song. 


38  THE  JOY   OF   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

To  live  in  this  world,  and  do  nothing  for  one's  own 
spiritual  self  or  for  fellow-man  or  for  God,  is  a  terrible 
thing.  I  have  a  right  to  give  the  less  as  a  burnt  offering 
to  the  greater.  There  is  no  happy  life  except  in  such 
consecration.  No  one  shaU  shut  me  out  of  that  privi- 
lege of  my  redeemed  humanity. 

I  wish  that  I  could  speak  to  the  spirit  of  the  most 
selfish  creature  here  to-day.  I  wish  I  could  show  him 
what  a  vast  region  of  pleasure  and  delight  lies  close  at 
his  side,  on  which  he  has  never  entered,  of  which  he  has 
never  dreamed.  The  door  that  shuts  him  out  of  that 
great  region  of  joy  is  his  own  contempt.  If  he  will  let 
Christ  fill  the  world  for  him  with  the  light  of  His  re- 
demption, contempt  must  fall  to  the  ground,  and  the 
closed  door  must  fiy  open,  and  then,  "  with  the  song  of 
the  Lord  and  with  the  trumpets,"  the  selfish  man  must 
go  out  from  his  selfishness  into  the  untasted  and  un- 
guessed  joy  of  self-sacrifice.  He  must  "  enter  into  the 
joy  of  his  Lord,"  the  joy  of  that  Christ  whose  meat  was 
to  do  His  Father's  will,  who  gave  His  life  for  His 
brethren,  and  whose  throne  was  a  cross. 


ni 

THE  YOUNG   AND    OLD   CHRISTIAN. 
*•  The  good  will  of  Him  that  dwelt  in  the  bush." —  Deut.  xxxiil.  16. 

Moses  had  been  young  and  now  was  old.  These 
words  are  taken  from  his  benediction,  which  he  pro- 
nounced upon  the  children  of  Israel  as  he  stood  with 
them  on  the  borders  of  the  promised  land.  There  is 
something  very  touching  in  the  reminiscence.  The 
long  journey  through  the  desert  is  over.  He  has  done 
God's  work  nobly  and  successfully.  Well  may  he  be 
proud  of  tliis  people  that  he  has  led  up  to  the  threshold 
of  their  inheritance.  But  now  his  mind  is  running 
backward.  This  crowning  of  his  mission  with  clear 
success  reminds  him  of  the  time  when  his  mission 
started  out  in  mystery  and  weakness.  He  sees  again  a 
bush  which  he  once  saw  by  a  wayside.  He  is  a  young 
man  again,  a  shepherd  keeping  his  father-in-law's  flock 
on  the  back  side  of  the  desert,  by  Mount  Horeb.  He 
sees  once  more  the  bush  on  fire.  He  draws  near  again 
with  unshod  feet,  and  once  more  in  his  aged  ears  he 
liears  the  voice  out  of  the  bush  commissioning  him  for 
the  great  work  of  his  life.  With  that  impulse  which  I 
suppose  we  all  have  felt,  that  brings  up  at  the  close  of 
any  work  the  freshened  memory  of  its  beginning,  this 
old  man  sees  the  burning  bush  again  as  he  saw  it  years 
before,  only  with  deeper  understanding  of  its  meaning. 


40  THE   YOUNG   AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

and  a  completer  sense  of  the  love  of  God  which  it  in- 
volved. He  looks  into  the  past,  and  all  the  mercy  that 
had  come  in  between,  —  all  the  miraculous  food,  and 
the  wonderful  victories,  and  the  parted  waters,  and  the 
constant  guidance,  —  he  sees  now  were  all  certainly 
involved  in  that  first  summons  of  God  which  he  had 
once  obeyed  so  blindly ;  and  when  he  wants  to  give  his 
people  the  benediction  that  represents  to  him  the  most 
complete  and  comprehensive  love,  it  is  touching  to  hear 
the  old  man  go  back  and  invoke  "  The  good  will  of  Him 
that  dwelt   in  the  bush." 

Religion  delights  both  in  reminiscence  and  in  an- 
ticipation. Being  full  of  the  sense  of  God,  it  finds 
a  unity  in  life  which  no  atheistic  thought  can  dis- 
cover. The  identity  of  God's  eternal  being  stretches 
under,  and  gives  consistence  to,  our  fragmentary  lives. 
God's  eternity  makes  our  time  coherent.  And  so  it 
was  God  in  the  old  bush  that  made  it  still  visible 
to  Moses  across  the  eventful  interval.  He  saw  that 
bush  when  all  the  other  bushes  of  Egypt  had  faded 
out  of  sight,  because  that  bush  was  on  fire  with  God. 
And  as  Christianity  is  the  most  Aavid  of  all  religions, 
with  its  personally  manifested  God,  there  is  a  more  per- 
fect unity  in  a  Christian  life  than  in  any  other.  It 
keeps  all  its  parts,  and  from  its  consummations  looks 
back  with  gratitude  and  love  to  its  beginnings.  The 
crown  that  it  casts  before  the  throne  at  last  is  the  same 
that  it  felt  trembling  on  its  brow  in  the  first  ecstatic 
sense  of  Christ's  forgiveness,  and  that  has  been  steadily 
glowing  into  greater  clearness  as  perfecting  love  has 
more  and  more  completely  cast  out  fear.  The  feet  that 
go  up  to  God  into  the  mountain,  at  the  end,  are  the 


THE  YOUNG   AND   OLD   CHKISTIAN.  41 

same  that  first  put  off  their  shoes  beside  the  burning 
bush.  This  is  why  the  Christian,  more  than  other 
men,  not  merely  dares  but  loves  to  look  back  and  re- 
member. 

But  I  wish  to-day  to  call  up  this  picture  of  Moses  only 
in  order  to  suggest  a  certain  topic.  We  have  the  be- 
ginning and  the  ripening  of  an  experience  brought  close 
together.  Let  us  think  of  the  young  Christian  and  the 
old  Christian  :  the  same  man  in  his  first  apprehension, 
and  in  his  ripened  knowledge,  of  Christ.  What  is  the 
difference  ^between  the  two?  What  is  the  growth 
which  brings  one  into  the  other  ?  Everybody  claims 
that  the  Christian  experience  ripens  and  deepens. 
What  is  there  riper  and  deeper  in  the  full  existence 
that  there  was  not  in  the  incipient  life  ?  This  is  the 
question  which  I  want  to  study ;  or,  in  other  words,  we 
may  call  our  subject,  —  The  nature  and  method  of  the 
growth  of  Christian  character.  I  know  that  every 
Christian,  old  or  young,  will  welcome  such  a  study  if 
it  can  unfold  to  us  any  of  the  rich  and  mysterious  laws 
of  the  spiritual  life. 

One  general  and  obvious  law  of  all  true  growth  sug- 
gests itself  at  once,  which  we  will  just  point  out  before 
we  go  on  to  particulars.  It  is  that  every  healthy 
growth  creates  the  conditions  of  new  growth,  makes 
new  growth  possible.  The  illustrations  are  numberless 
everywhere.  Every  ray  of  sunlight  that  gives  some 
ripeness  to  an  apple  makes  tlie  apple  opener  to  more 
sunlight,  which  shall  ripen  it  still  more.  Or,  think  of  a 
nation ;  every  advance  in  liberty  makes  new  advances 
not  merely  possible  but  necessary.  Or,  think  of  man ; 
the  powers  which  develop  either  the  physical  or  the  men- 


42  THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

tal  nature  from  fifteen  years  old  to  twenty  open  the 
mind  and  body  to  new  influences  which  are  to  feed  it 
from  twenty  to  twenty-five.  Every  summer  is  also  a 
spring-time.  Indeed  we  may  make  this  a  test  of 
growth.  Every  ray  of  sun  which  does  not  open  the 
ground  to  new  sunlight,  is  not  feeding  it  but  baking  it. 
This  is  the  true  test  of  growing  force.  It  opens  the 
beautiful  reactions  between  itself  and  the  growing  thing, 
and  creates  an  openness  for  yet  more  of  itself 

Now  see  how  this  is  the  method  of  all  Christian 
growth.  A  child  becomes  a  Christian.  He  learns,  that 
is,  to  understand  and  claim  the  love  of  Christ.  "  I 
know  that  Christ  loves  me,  and  wants  to  train  me,"  the 
glad  young  heart  says.  That  consciousness  makes  the 
child's  soul  purer  and  more  Christlike.  Into  that  soul, 
become  more  Christly,  a  yet  deeper  sense  of  the  love  of 
Christ  can  enter  to  work  a  yet  greater  change.  Then, 
to  this  still  renewed  soul,  opens  some  newer  vision  of 
what  Christ  can  do.  This  new  work  done  unfolds 
some  new  capacity  of  loving  and  receiving  love.  And 
so,  in  this  continual  reaction  between  Christ  and  the 
soul,  —  every  new  openness  fed  with  a  new  love  that 
opens  it  still  more,  —  the  life-long,  the  eternal  work 
goes  on.  Heaven  will  be  only  the  fuller,  prompter, 
more  unhindered  pulsing  back  and  forth,  between  Christ 
and  the  soul,  of  this  sublime  and  sweet  reaction.  This 
was  the  foundation  of  the  certainty  which  Paul  felt  for 
his  Philippians  when  he  told  them  that  he  vras  "  confi- 
dent of  this  very  thing,  that  He  who  had  begun  a 
good  work  in  them  would  perform  it  unto  the  day  of 
Jesus  Christ."  He  foresaw  for  them  what  he  had  felt  in 
himself,  —  that  love  would  mean  receptivity,  that  every 


-THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN.  43 

new  love  would  bring  a  fuller  knowledge,  and  every 
knowledge  lay  the  soul  open  to  a  completer  love. 

But,  just  suggesting  this,  let  us  go  on  and  try  to  par- 
ticularize some  of  the  sorts  of  difference  between  the 
young  and  the  maturer  Christian,  and  so  see  what  sorts 
of  growth  this  law  of  growth,  which  we  have  pointed 
out,  will  produce. 

And,  for  one  thing,  I  should  say  that  as  every  Chris- 
tian becomes  more  and  more  a  Christian,  there  must  be 
a  larger  and  larger  absorption  of  truth  or  doctrine  into 
life.  We  hear  all  around  us  now-a-days  a  great  im- 
patience with  the  prominence  of  dogma  —  that  is,  of 
truth  abstractly  and  definitely  stated  —  in  Christianity. 
And  most  of  those  who  are  thus  impatient  really  mean 
well.  They  feel  that  Christianity,  being  a  thing  of  per- 
sonal salvation,  ought  to  show  itself  in  characters  and 
lives.  There  they  are  right.  But  to  decry  dogma  in 
the  interest  of  character,  is  like  despising  food  as  if  it 
interfered  with  health.  Food  is  not  health.  The  hu- 
man body  is  built  just  so  as  to  turn  food  into  health 
and  strength.  And  truth  is  not  holiness.  The  hu- 
man soul  is  made  to  turn,  by  the  subtle  chemistry  of 
its  digestive  experience,  truth  into  goodness.  And 
this,  I  think,  is  just  what  the  Christian,  as  he  goes 
on,  finds  himself  doing  under  God's  grace.  Before 
the  young  Christian  lie  the  doctrines  of  his  faith, — 
God's  being,  God's  care,  Christ's  incarnation,  Christ's 
atonement,  immortality.  What  has  the  old  Christian, 
with  his  long  experience,  done  with  them  ?  He  holds 
them  no  longer  crudely,  as  things  to  be  believed  merely. 
He  has  taken  them  home  into  his  nature.  He  has 
transmuted   them  into  forms  of  life,     God's  being  ap- 


44        THE  YOUNG  AND  OLD  CHRISTIAN. 

pears  now  filling  his  life  with  reverence.  God's  care 
clothes  every  act  and  thought  of  his  with  gratitude. 
Christ's  incarnation  is  the  inspiration  of  his  new,  dear 
love  of  all  humanity.  The  atonement  is  the  power  of 
his  all-pervading  and  deep-rooted  faith.  And  immor- 
tality !  He  no  longer  thinks  of  that  as  a  doctrine, 
which  has  become  a  great,  constant  flood  of  life,  ever 
resting  over  and  illuminating  the  far-off  hill-tops  —  now 
grown  so  near,  so  real  —  of  the  eternal  life.  The  young 
dogmatist  boasts  of  his  dogmas.  The  old  saint  lives 
his  life.  Both  are  natural  in  their  places  and  times, 
as  are  the  unripe  and  the  ripened  fruit.  How  soon  you 
can  tell  the  men  whose  soils  have  tugged  at  the  roots 
of  their  doctrines  and  taken  them  in,  and  left  them  no 
longer  lying  on  the  surface,  but  made  them  germinate 
into  life. 

And  in  the  second  place,  as  a  consequence  of  this 
feature  of  growth,  there  will  come  a  growing  variety  in 
Christian  character  as  Christians  grow  older.  I  think 
we  should  expect  a  uniformity  and  resemblance  in 
younger  Christians,  and  a  diversity  in  older  ones, 
because  life  is  more  various  than  doctrine.  Each 
young  Christian  has  his  doctrine,  crude  and  dogmatic 
still.  The  maturer  Christians  have  not  merely  worked 
those  doctrines  into  life,  but  each  has  worked  them  into 
his  own  sort  of  life.  The  truth  is  the  same  for  all ;  the 
life  it  makes  is  infinite.  The  more  deeply  it  has  been 
digested,  the  more  strongly  the  individuality  comes  out. 
The  truth  which  God  gives  us  is  like  the  wheat  that  a 
bounteous  country  sends  into  the  city.  It  is  all  the 
same  wheat ;  but  men  go  and  buy  it  and  eat  it,  and 
this  same  identical  wheat  is  turned  into  different  sorts 


THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN.  45 

of  force  in  different  men.  It  is  turned  into  bartering 
force  in  one,  and  thinking  force  in  another,  and  singing 
force  in  another,  and  governing  force  in  another.  It  is 
made  manifold  as  soon  as  it  passes  into  men.  So  I 
think  every  minister  finds  that,  as  his  disciples  grow 
older,  if  he  has  really  succeeded  in  getting  the  truth  to 
be  their  truth,  they  grow  into  more  various  forms  of 
Christian  charity  and  usefulness.  Each  grows  more 
evidently  to  be  not  merely  a  Christian,  but  the  Chris- 
tian that  God  intended  him  to  be.  They  think  more. 
They  think  differently.  The  pure  white  light  breaks 
itself  to  each  in  different  colors.  Often  the  minister  is 
alarmed.  His  confirmation  classes,  which  took  the 
truths  he  taught  them  out  of  the  Bible  all  alike,  and 
went  out  all  to  the  same  work,  —  see  how  they  have 
scattered ;  see  how  different  they  are !  What  does  it 
mean  ?  Merely  tliis :  it  is  doctrine  passing,  growing, 
into  life.  Those  twelve  disciples  must  have  seemed 
very  much  like  one  another,  as  they  all  followed  Jesus 
on  the  road,  or  sat  around  Him  in  the  temple,  drinking  in 
His  words.  But  see,  after  His  words  had  become  their 
life,  how  clear,  distinct,  and  individual  they  are  —  John, 
Peter,  James,  Matthew.  The  seed  looks  the  same  ;  the 
flowers  are  so  different.  Let  us  rejoice  in  the  clear 
individuality  of  maturing  Christian  life.  Its  one  prin- 
ciple is  still  identical ;  and  so  it  already  prophesies 
heaven,  where  we  are  sure  we  shall  be  all  different  illus- 
trations of  the  one  same  grace,  showing  different  charac- 
ters, set  to  different  works  but  all  moved  by  one  spirit, 
all  illustrations  of  the  one  same  grace  still. 

And  as  individuality  is  developed  with  the  deepening 
spiritual  life,  so  I  am  sure  *hnt  *;be  willingness  to  recog- 


46        THE  YOUNG  AND  OLD  CHRISTIAN. 

nize  and  welcome  individual  differences  of  thought  and 
feeling  and  action  increases,  too,  as  Christians  grow 
riper.  Seeing  ourselves  made  more  ourselves  as  our 
faith  grows  richer,  we  are  glad  to  see  other  men  made 
more  themselves  too.  This  is  true  charity.  It  is  your 
undeveloped,  crude,  commonplace  Christian  who  is 
uncharitable.  He  expects  other  Christians  to  be  like 
himself.  He  has  never  felt  that  divine,  deep  movement 
of  Christ  in  his  own  soul,  telling  him  that  from  all 
eternity  there  has  been  one  certain  place  for  him  to  fill, 
one  certain  thing  for  hira  to  be,  and  summoning  him  to 
come  and  fill  his  place  and  be  himself ;  and  so  when 
some  brother  rises  out  of  the  crowd  of  un distinguish- 
able believers,  and  goes  out  to  stand  upon  his  outpost, 
this  other  soul  rebukes  him,  calls  him  arrogant,  radical, 
wise  beyond  what  is  written,  and  foolish  names  like 
those.  I  can  well  understand  that  the  seeds  in  a 
sower's  basket  might  be  very  uncharitable  to  one 
brother-seed  that  had  dropped  out  of  the  basket  and 
taken  root  and  grown  to  be  a  stalk  of  corn.  It  is  too 
unlike  them.  It  is  too  original  and  singular.  But  let 
them  all  fall  together  and  take  root,  and  then,  with  life 
in  all  of  them,  they  will  not  compare  their  ears  and 
tassels,  each  being  so  busy  in  growing  to  the  best  that 
its  separate  bit  of  earth  can  bring  it  to.  The  true 
Christian  charity  is  that  which  life  teaches.  It  is  the 
tried  and  cultured  souls  that  understand  each  other's 
trials  and  cultures,  though  they  be  wholly  different  from 
their  own.  And  no  sight  is  more  beautiful  than  to  see 
this  grace  growing  in  a  body  of  believers. 

It  helps  us  much,  I  think,  if  we  can  recognize  the  fit- 
ness of  this  progress.     Narrowness  of  view  and  sympathy 


THh   YOUNG   AND    OLD    CHRISTIAN.  47 

is  not  unnatural  in  a  new  believer.  It  is  very  unnatural 
in  the  maturer  Christian  life.  In  the  one  it  is  the 
sourness  of  unripe  fruit,  showing  only  unripeness ;  in 
the  other  it  is  the  sourness  of  a  ripe  apple  or  of  an  apple 
that  ought  to  be  ripe,  and  proves  cramped  and  stunted 
life.  The  figures  which  most  naturally  suggest  them- 
selves are  these  of  vegetable  life,  when  we  are  talking 
of  growth  of  any  sort.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  best  for 
the  young  Christian  to  be  illiberal.  Far  better  certainly 
if  he  could  leap  at  once  to  the  full  comprehension  and 
the  wide  charity  which  the  older  Christian  gathers  out 
of  the  experience  of  life.  But,  as  a  fact,  it  is  too  apt  to 
be  the  case  that  only  by  experience  does  the  Christian 
reach  this  breadth  of  sympathy,  which  comes  not  from 
indifference,  but  from  the  profoundest  personal  earnest- 
ness. It  is  something  wholly  different  from  the  loose 
toleration  which  some  men  praise,  which  is  negative, 
which  cares  nothing  about  what  is  absolutely  true  or 
false.  This  is  positive.  It  holds  fast  to  its  certain 
truths,  well  proved,  long  tried.  Just  because  those 
truths  have  laid  intense  hold  upon  its  deepest  soul,  and 
become  its  truths  in  its  own  shapes,  it  expects  and  re- 
joices to  see  them,  the  same  truths  still,  becoming  other 
men's  in  their  own  shapes.  This  is  the  only  true  Chris- 
tian charity,  the  only  charity  that  rejoiceth  in  the 
truth. 

And  here  comes  in  another  noble  characteristic  of  the 
growing  spiritual  experience,  its  ever-increasing  inde- 
pendence. This  is  tlie  best  personal  result  of  charity. 
There  is  an  independence  which  is  arrogant  and  defiant, 
and  there  is  a  dependence  that  is  weak  and  fawning. 
Both  come  of  narrowness.     Both  are  the  signs  of  imma- 


48  THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

ture  and  meagre  life.  One  man  arms  himself  against 
his  brethren  because  he  holds  them  to  be  wholly  wrong 
and  himself  wholly  right.  Another  man  yields  to  his 
brethren  because  he  fears  that  he  is  wrong  and  they  are 
right.  There  is  a  man  of  mellow  strength  who,  deeply 
conscious  of  the  work  the  Lord  has  done  in  him,  made 
sure  of  it  by  long  feeling  the  very  pressures  of  God's  hand 
kneading  the  truth  into  his  nature,  stands  by  that 
work ;  will  let  no  man  cavil  it  away  from  his  tenacious 
consciousness  ;  is  so  perfectly  dependent  upon  Christ 
that  he  can  hang  upon  no  fellow-man  ;  respects  himself 
by  the  same  reverence  for  the  individuality  of  the 
divine  life  that  makes  him  also  respect  his  brethren. 

The  analogies  between  a  man's  life  and  the  world's 
life  are  so  continually  suggested  that  one  often  wonders 
whether  there  be  not  some  analogy  here  ;  whether  some 
such  progress  into  charity  by  the  very  positiveness  of 
faith,  may  not  be  possible,  may  not  be  coming  as  the 
final  solution  of  all  these  problems  which  keep  the 
world  so  full  of  jealousy  and  strife.  At  present  it 
seems  to  be  assumed  that  narrowness  is  essential  to 
positive  belief,  and  that  toleration  can  be  reached  only 
by  general  indifference.  Not  long  ago  I  read  this 
sentence  in  what  many  hold  to  be  our  ablest  and  most 
thoughtful  journal :  "  It  is  a  law,  which  in  the  present 
condition  of  human  nature  holds  good,  that  strength  of 
conviction  is  always  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  the  tolerant 
spirit."  If  that  is  so,  then  the  present  condition  of 
human  nature  is  certainly  very  much  depraved.  But  if 
human  nature  ever  can  be  rescued  by  a  personal  salva- 
tion, if  mankind  can  ever  become  possessed  by  the 
Spirit  of  God,  lifting  the  mass  by  filling  the  individuals 


THE  YOUNG  AND  OLD  CHRISTIAN.        49 

each  with  his  own  strong  manifestation  of  its  power, 
then  the  world  may  still  see  some  maturer  type  of 
Christianity,  in  which  new  ages  of  positive  faith  may 
still  be  iilled  with  the  broadest  sympathy,  and  men 
tolerate  their  brethren  without  enfeebling  themselves. 
Such  ages  may  God  hasten. 

Let  us  pass  on.  I  think  another  sign  of  the  growth 
of  Christian  character  is  to  be  found  in  what  we  may 
call  the  growing  transfiguration  of  duty.  See  what  I 
mean.  To  every  young  Christian  the  new  service  of 
Christ  comes  largely  with  the  look  of  a  multitude  of 
commandments.  They  throng  around  his  life,  each  one 
demanding  to  be  obeyed.  He  welcomes  them  joyously. 
He  takes  up  his  tasks  with  glad  hands  still,  because 
they  are  his  Master's  tasks.  But  as  he  grows  older  in 
grace,  is  there  no  difference  ?  Tell  me,  you  who  have 
long  been  the  servants  of  our  dear  and  gracious  Lord,  has 
there  come  in  your  long  Christian  life  no  change  in  the 
whole  aspect  of  your  service  ?  Has  not  your  more  and 
more  intimate  sympathy  with  Him  let  you  in  behind 
many  and  many  a  duty  which  once  seemed  dark  and 
hard,  and  allowed  you  to  see  the  light  of  His  loving 
intention  burning  there  ?  Have  you  not  grown  into  a 
clearer  and  deeper  understanding  of  what  Jesus  meant 
by  those  sweet  and  wonderful  words,  "  Henceforth  I 
call  you  not  servants,  for  the  servant  knoweth  not  what 
his  Lord  doeth ;  but  I  have  called  you  friends,  for  all 
things  that  I  have  heard  of  my  Father  I  have  made 
known  unto  you"  ?  In  every  opening  Christian  life 
there  is  something  Mosaic,  something  Hebrew.  The 
order  of  the  Testaments  is  somewhat  repeated  in  the 
experience  of  every  believer.     At  last,  in  the  fulness  of 

4 


50'  THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

time,  the  New  Testament  has  perfectly  come.  The  la-w 
is  given  first,  and  then  grace  and  truth  come  by  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  no  sudden  transformation.  It  cannot  be, 
because  it  cannot  come  otherwise  than  by  the  gradual 
teaching  of  life.  But  when  it  has  wholly  come,  then, 
full  of  the  complete  consciousness  of  Christ,  duty  is  done 
not  simply  because  Christ  has  commanded  it  and  we 
love  Him,  but  because  Christ  has  filled  us  with  Himself, 
transformed  our  standards,  recreated  our  afiections,  and 
we  love  the  duty  too,  seeing  its  essential  beauty  as  He 
sees  it,  out  of  whose  nature  it  proceeds.  I  am  sure  that 
such  a  change  does  come  both  in  our  active  and  oui 
passive  duties.  The  fight  that  we  must  fight,  or  the 
sickness  that  we  must  bear,  both  change  from  tasks,  to 
be  done  because  He  commands  them,  into  privileges 
which  we  embrace  because  we  love  them.  Do  we  not 
all  feel  the  change  that  had  come  between  Paul  crying 
submissively  "  Lord,  what  wilt  Tiiou  have  me  to  do  ? " 
looking  to  an  outside  Christ  for  commandment,  and  the 
same  Paul  crying  "  Not  I  live  but  Christ  liveth  in  me  ! " 
rejoicing  in  the  inspiration  of  an  inward  Savior  ?  This 
was  the  perfect  victory  after  which  Paul  was  always 
longing  so  intensely.  It  did  not  come  perfectly  to  him 
in  this  world.  It  cannot  to  any  of  us.  Dependent  as 
it  is  upon  the  knowledge  of  Christ  by  the  soul,  it  can- 
not be  perfect  till  the  soul's  knowledge  of  Christ  shall 
be  perfect  in  heaven.  Here  we  must  always  see  duty, 
like  God,  "  in  a  glass,  darkly  ; "  only  there  "  face  to  face." 
But  as  it  begins  to  come  here,  duty  already  begins  to  be 
transfigured  before  us.  It  pvits  on  its  divinity.  Its 
face  shines  as  the  sun.  Its  raiment,  which  seemed  cold, 
becomes  white  as  the  light.     Already  we  see  its  beauty. 


THE  YOUNG  AND  OLD  CHRISTIAN.        51 

Already  we  see  how  we  shall  love  it  some  day ;  and  we 
cry  out  like  the  apostles,  "  Lord,  it  is  good  for  us  to  be 
here.  Let  us  stay  here  where  duty  is  seen  to  be  noth- 
ing but  the  glorious  atmosphere  of  Thy  personal  will." 

But  this  brings  us  to  what  after  all  we  must  hold  to 
be  the  profoundest  and  most  reliable  sign  of  the  matur- 
ing spiritual  life.  All  these  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking  are  only  secondary  symptoms  of  the  great 
privilege  of  the  Christian,  which  is  deepening  personal 
intimacy  with  Him  who  is  the  Christian's  life,  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.  All  comes  to  that  at  last.  Christianity 
begins  with  many  motives.  It  all  fastens  itself  at  last 
upon  one  motive,  which  does  not  exclude,  but  is  large 
enough  to  comprehend  all  that  is  good  in  all  the  rest, 
"That  I  may  know  Him."  Those  are  Paul's  words. 
How  constantly  we  come  back  to  his  large,  rounded  life, 
as  the  picture  of  what  the  Christian  is  and  becomes.  If 
I  could  set  before  you  the  young  man  at  Damascus  and 
the  old  man  at  Rome,  and  bid  you  compare  the  two, 
this  sermon  I  am  preaching  need  not  have  been  begun. 
"  That  I  may  know  Him."  We  have  all  seen,  I  am 
sure,  if  it  has  been  our  privilege  to  watch  true  Chris- 
tians growing  old,  the  special  and  absorbing  way  with 
which  the  personal  Christ,  their  knowledge  of  Him,  and 
His  knowledge  of  them,  comes  to  be  all  their  religion. 
You  hear  them  talk  of  Him,  and  it  seems  already  as  if 
their  lives  had  entered  into  that  heaven,  which,  as  we 
read  the  mystic  description  of  it  in  the  book  of  Revela- 
tions, seems  to  consist  in  His  personality.  He  is  its 
temple ;  He  is  its  sun ;  His  name  is  written  on  the  fore- 
heads of  its  happy  saints.  Indeed  Christ,  to  the  Chris- 
tian growing  older,  seems  to  be  what  the  sun  is  to  the 


52  THE  YOUNG   AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

developing  day,  which  it  lightens  from  the  morning  to 
the  evening.  When  the  sun  is  in  the  zenith  in  the 
broad  noon-day,  men  do  their  various  works  by  his  light ; 
but  they  do  not  so  often  look  up  to  him.  It  is  the  sun- 
light that  they  glory  in,  flooding  a  thousand  tasks  with 
clearness,  making  a  million  things  beautiful.  But  as  the 
world  rolls  into  the  evening,  it  is  the  sun  itself  at  sun- 
set that  men  gather  to  look  at  and  admire  and  love. 
So  to  the  earlier  and  middle  stages  of  a  Christian  life, 
Christ  is  the  revealer  of  duty  and  truth ;  and  duty  and 
truth  become  clear  and  dear  in  His  light.  The  young 
Christian  glories  in  the  way  in  which,  under  his  Master's 
power,  he  can  work  for  humanity,  for  truth,  for  his 
nation,  for  society,  for  his  family.  But  as  the  Christian 
life  ripens  into  evening,  it  is  not  these  things,  though 
they  are  not  forgotten,  that  the  soul  dwells  on  most. 
It  is  the  Lord  Himself.  It  is  that  He  is  the  soul's,  and 
the  soul  is  His.  It  is  His  wondrousness,  His  dearness, 
and  His  truth,  that  fill  the  life  as  it  presses  closer  to 
where  He  stands,  —  as  the  setting  earth  rolls  on  towards 
the  sun. 

And  this  is  philosophical.  It  is  strictly  in  accordance 
with  the  whole  nature  of  our  religion  that  it  should  thus 
grow.  It  cannot  be  perfect  all  at  once.  For  Chris- 
tianity is  knowing  Christ,  and  personal  knowledge  can 
come  only  by  experience  ;  and  experience  takes  time. 
A  truth  you  may  embrace,  and  embrace  completely,  so 
soon  as  you  understand  the  terms  of  its  statement  and 
have  learned  its  evidence.  But  you  cannot  bring  a  per- 
son, as  you  can  a  proposition,  up  to  a  man,  and  say 
"  Here,  know  him  ! "  as  you  say  "  Know  this ! "  and  be 
at  once  obeyed.      "  I  cannot,"  he  replies.      "  However 


THE  YOUNG  AND  OLD  CHRISTIAN.        53 

thoroughly  you  vouch  for  him,  I  cannot  know  him  till 
he  shows  himself  to  me.  I  thank  you  for  bringing  him 
to  me.  I  thank  you  more  than  if  I  could  know  him 
all  at  once,  for  if  he  is  really  all  you  say,  then  there  lies 
before  me  a  long  career  of  gradual  knowledge  that  shall 
be  all  delight  to  me  till  I  shall  know  him  perfectly." 
This  seems  to  me  one  diiference  of  Christians.  Make 
Christianity  a  doctrinal  system,  and  when  your  new 
disciple  has  learned  his  catechism,  he  is  all  done ;  and 
pretty  soon  you  will  find  him  sitting  with  his  hands  in 
his  lap,  complaining  that  there  is  nothing  more  to  learn, 
and  either  finding  his  well-learned  faith  dull  and  unin- 
teresting, or  supplementing  it  with  dogmatic  speculations 
of  his  own.  Make  Christianity  a  personal  knowledge  of 
Christ,  and  then,  with  ever  new  enticements,  each  little 
that  he  knows  opening  to  him  something  more  to  know 
of  the  infinite  personal  life,  obedience  feeding  love,  and 
love  stinmlating  obedience,  he  presses  on  in  the  never 
stale,  never  weary  ambition  of  "  knowing  Christ." 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  think  or  talk  as  if  there  were 
two  religions,  one  for  the  young  Christian  and  one  for 
the  older ;  as  if  the  power  of  the  personal  Christ  were 
not  present  to  waken  the  first  good  desire  of  the  new 
life,  as  it  is  at  last  to  crown  the  victorious  well-doer 
kneeling  on  the  steps  of  the  throne.  I  pointed  out,  in 
opening,  that  just  this  —  the  continuous  presence  of  a 
manifested  God  —  is  what  makes  the  unity  of  the  Chris- 
tian life.  Do  not  misunderstand  me  then.  I  turn  to 
the  youngest  child  just  beginning  to  try  to  do  right,  and 
I  see  the  little  hand  clasped  in  the  hand  of  a  Savior 
who  is  holding  it  close,  who  is  watching  the  feeble  feet, 
who  is  bending  over  and  listening  to  his  prayers.     But 


54  THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

just  because  that  child  has  already  tasted  the  power  of  a 
present  Christ,  he  is  able  to  comprehend  the  beauty  of 
the  life  you  offer  hira  when  you  tell  him  that  it  is  aU 
to  be  the  development  of  that  relationship  in  which  he 
finds  himself  already,  the  deepening  of  that  friendship 
between  him  and  his  Lord. 

There  is  as  yet  no  culture,  no  method  of  progress 
known  to  men,  that  is  so  rich  and  complete  as  that  which 
is  ministered  by  a  truly  great  friendship.  No  natural 
appetite,  no  artificial  taste,  no  rivalry  of  competition,  no 
contagion  of  social  activity,  calls  out  such  a  large, 
healthy,  symmetrical  working  of  a  human  nature,  as  the 
constant,  half-unconscious  power  of  a  friend's  presence 
whom  we  thoroughly  respect  and  love.  In  a  true  friend- 
ship there  is  emulation  without  its  jealousy ;  there  is 
imitation  without  its  servility.  When  one  friend  teaches 
another  by  his  present  life,  there  is  none  of  that  divorce 
of  truth  from  feeling,  and  of  feeling  from  truth,  which  in 
so  many  of  the  world's  teachings  makes  truth  hard,  and 
feeling  weak  ;  but  truth  is  taught,  and  feeling  is  inspired, 
by  the  same  action  of  one  nature  on  the  other,  and  they 
keep  each  other  true  and  warm.  Surely  there  is  no 
more  beautiful  sight  to  see  in  all  this  world,  —  full  as  it 
is  of  beautiful  adjustments  and  mutual  ministrations, — 
than  the  growth  of  two  friends'  natures  who,  as  they 
grow  old  together,  are  always  fathoming,  with  newer 
needs,  deeper  depths  of  each  other's  life,  and  opening 
richer  veins  of  one  another's  helpfulness.  And  this  best 
culture  of  personal  friendship  is  taken  up  and  made,  in 
its  infinite  completion,  the  gospel  method  of  the  pro- 
gressive saving  of  the  soul  by  Christ. 

When  we  get  this  idea  of  Christianity,  there  is  noth- 


THE  YOUNG  AND  OLD  CHRISTIAN.        55 

ing  strange  in  the  halo  of  dearness  which,  to  every 
Christian,  hangs  around  the  scenes  with  which  the 
beginning  of  his  new  life  is  associated.  The  place  where 
two  friends  first  met  is  sacred  to  them  all  through  their 
friendship  —  all  the  more  sacred  as  their  friendship 
deepens  and  grows  old.  It  is  the  same  sort  of  feeling 
which  sent  the  heart  of  Moses  back  to  the  bush.  And 
to  how  many  a  saint  the  day  and  place  where  he  first 
heard  God's  voice  will  be  earth's  one  sacred  memory, 
even  long  after  earth's  life  is  over.  Do  you  think  that 
Moses  will  not  speak  of  the  bush,  and  Samuel  of  the 
little  temple-chamber,  and  Peter  and  John  of  their  boats 
on  the  still  lake,  and  Paul  of  the  Damascus  road,  and 
Matthew  of  his  tax-table,  and  the  poor  woman  of  the 
wayside  well,  when  they  are  met  above  ?  Only  the  last 
day  shall  tell  how  much  of  earth  is  hallowed  ground. 
This  is  what  makes  the  old  churches  holy  with  an 
accumulated  sacredness  which  surpasses  their  first  conse- 
cration. Who  can  tell  how  many  this  church  of  ours 
will  find  among  the  blessed  to  honor  and  treasure  her 
forever,  that  she  may  not  be  forgotten  when  the  birth- 
places of  souls  are  remembered  ?  This  has  always  been 
the  feeling  of  the  world  about  Palestine,  the  land 
where  the  world  first  knew  Christ,  —  sometimes  breaking 
out  into  a  crusade  for  its  recovery  ;  sometimes  cheering 
the  weariness  of  pilgrims  who  were  struggling  on  to  see 
Jerusalem  and  the  Mount  of  Olives  before  they  died ; 
sometimes  showing  itself  in  tlie  mystical  transfer  of  the 
names  of  Palestinian  geography  to  the  hills  and  valleys, 
the  heights  and  depths  of  the  spiritual  life.  A  recent 
English  scholar  has  pointed  out  how  often  St.  Paul's 
religious  thought  looked  back  to  the  scene  of  Stephen's 


56  THE  YOUNG  AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN. 

martp'dom,  where,  as  he  stood  by  and  held  the  mur- 
derers' clothes,  his  own  first  earnest  interest  in  Chris- 
tianity was  blindly  stirred.  Paul's  speech  at  Antioch 
reminds  us  throughout  of  Stephen's  defence  before  his 
judges.  Paul's  address  at  Athens  uses  some  of  Stephen's 
very  words.  Several  of  Paul's  most  difficult  and  deepest 
phrases  in  his  Epistles  seem  to  correspond  with  forms 
of  thought  which  the  martyr  had  uttered  years  before, 
and  which  had  sunk  into  the  mind  of  the  thoughtful 
young  Jew.  It  is  indeed  a  goodly  spirit  that  treasures 
its  past  miracles,  that  goes  down  the  gracious  avenues 
of  life  to  find  the  bushes  out  of  which  it  first  heard 
God's  voice. 

But  come  back  for  a  few  moments  to  our  thought 
about  the  personal  presence  of  Christ  becoming  clearer 
to  us  as  we  grow  riper  in  the  Christian  life.  Let  me 
point  out,  in  a  word  or  two,  three  or  four  of  the  effects 
that  it  must  produce,  which  are  the  noble  characteristics 
of  the  maturest  Christians  : 

First,  it  must  give  us  a  more  infinite  view  of  life  in 
general,  or,  in  other  words,  must  make  us  more  un- 
worldly. To  be  always  living  with  One  whose  kingdom 
is  not  of  this  world ;  to  be  constantly  conversant,  as  we 
hold  intercourse  with  Him,  with  the  thought  that  there 
are  other  worlds  also  over  which  He  presides,  and  with 
which  we  have  something  to  do  through  our  union  with 
Him,  —  how  this  breaks  up  and  scatters  the  littleness 
of  life,  the  bondage  of  the  seen.  How  it  lets  us  out, 
free  to  trace  the  course  of  every  action,  the  career  of 
every  thought,  as  it  seeks  vast  untold  issues  in  other 
spheres.  More  and  more  terrible  appears  to  me  the 
crowding  in  of  life,  its  inability  to  scale  and  grasp  the 


THE  YOUNG   AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN.  57 

things  that  it  was  made  for.  Even  our  religion  busies 
itseK  with  little  temporal  duties,  with  church  machiner- 
ies and  observances.  What  is  there  that  can  lift  it  all, 
and  enlarge  it  and  let  it  free,  except  the  constant  known 
presence  of  One  who  is  infinite  and  who  lives  in  infin- 
ity —  the  God  of  eternity  made  known  to  us  as  oui*  be- 
loved Christ  ? 

And,  if  we  get  this,  then  something  else  must  come, 
namely,  more  hopefulness.  St.  Paul  has  a  noble  verse 
which  says  that  "  experience  worketh  hope."  It  must, 
if  it  is  full  of  Christ.  The  soul  that  is  getting  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  certain  knowledge  of  Him  must  be 
learning  that  it  has  no  right  to  fear;  that  however 
hopeless  things  look  there  can  be  nothing  but  success 
for  every  good  cause  in  the  hand  of  Christ.  It  is  a 
noble  process  for  a  man's  life  that  gradually  changes  the 
cold  dogma  that  "truth  is  strong  and  must  prevail" 
into  a  warm  enthusiastic  certainty  that  "  my  Christ 
must  conquer."  It  is  terrible  to  see  a  man  calling  him- 
self a  Christian  who  despairs  more  of  the  world  the 
longer  that  he  lives  in  it.  It  shows  that  he  is  letting 
the  world's  darkness  come  between  him  and  his  Lord's 
light.     It  shows  that  he  is  not  near  enough  to  Christ. 

And  with  the  growing  hopefulness  there  comes  a 
growing  courage.  How  timid  we  are  at  first.  I  be- 
come a  Christian,  and  it  seems  as  if  just  to  get  tliis  soul 
of  mine  saved  were  all  that  I  could  dare  to  try ;  but  as 
the  Savior's  strength  becomes  more  manifest  to  me,  as 
I  know  Him  more,  I  see  that  He  is  able  to  do  much 
more  than  that.  I  begin  to  aspire  to  have  a  little  part 
in  the  great  conquest  of  the  world  in  which  He  is  en- 
gaged.    And  so  the  Soldier  of  the  Cross  at  last  is  out  iu 


58  THE  YOUNG   AND   OLD   CHRISTIA.N. 

the  very  thick  of  the  battle,  striking  at  all  his  Master's 
enemies  in  the  perfect  assurance  of  his  Master's 
strength. 

And  then,  as  the  crown  of  all  these,  there  comes  to 
the  maturing  Christian,  out  of  his  constant  companion- 
ship with  Christ,  that  true  and  perfect  poise  of  soul 
which  I  think  grows  more  and  more  beautiful  as  we 
get  tired,  one  after  another,  of  the  fantastic  and  one- 
sided types  of  character  which  the  world  admires,  and 
which  seem  to  us  very  attractive  at  first.  Expectant 
without  impatience ;  patient  without  stagnation ;  wait- 
ing, but  always  ready  to  advance ;  loving  to  advance, 
but  always  ready  to  wait ;  full  of  confidence,  but  never 
proud ;  full  of  certainty,  but  never  arrogant ;  serene, 
but  enthusiastic;  rich  as  a  great  land  is  rich  in  the 
peace  that  comes  to  it  from  the  government  of  a  great, 
wise,  trusty  governor,  —  this  is  the  life  whose  whole 
power  is  summed  up  in  one  word  —  Faith.  "  Here  is 
the  patience  and  faith  of  the  saints."  This  is  the  life 
to  which  men  come  who,  through  long  years,  "  follow 
the  Lamb  whithersoever  He  goeth." 

"The  good-will  of  Him  that  dwelt  in  the  bush."  I 
have  tried  to  depict  what  comes  between  the  Bush  and 
the  Mountain,  what  it  is  on  which  the  aged  follower  of 
Christ  looks  back ;  what  it  is  to  wliich  the  young  fol- 
lower of  Christ  looks  forward.  Some  of  you  are  stand- 
ing as  Moses  stood,  —  the  desert  crossed,  the  promised 
land  almost  entered,  the  work  done  lying  back  behind 
you.  I  know  not  where  it  was,  —  in  some  church-pew, 
in  some  closet's  privacy,  in  some  stillness  or  some 
crowd,  —  years  ago  the  fire  came  ;  the  common  life  about 
you   burned   with   the   sudden   presence   of  Divinity; 


THE  YOUNG   AND   OLD   CHRISTIAN.  69 

God  called  you,  and  you  gave  yourself  to  God.  I  bid 
you  look  back  and  see  the  mercy  that  has  led  you  ever 
since,  and  strengthen  your  hope  and  courage  and  charity 
and  faith  as  you  remember  the  long,  long  good-will  of 
Him  that  dwelt  in  the  bush.  And  some  of  you  I  hope, 
I  know,  are  standing  just  by  the  bush-side  still,  the 
shoes  off  your  feet,  the  voice  of  God  in  your  ears, 
lifted  up  with  the  desire  for  the  new  life  of  Christ.  You 
are  determined  to  be  His,  for  He  has  called  you.  Well, 
till  the  end,  life  here  and  hereafter  will  be  only  the 
unfolding  of  this  personal  love  which  seems  to  you  so 
dear  and  so  mysterious  now.  Christ  will  grow  realler, 
nearer,  more  completely  your  Master  and  your  Savior 
all  your  life.  That  is  the  whole  of  your  religion.  But 
as  you  go  on  you  will  find  that  that  is  enough,  that  it 
is  more  than  eternity  can  exhaust.  The  mercy  which 
takes  you  into  its  bosom  at  last  in  heaven,  will  be  still 
the  old  familiar  good-will  of  Him  that  dwelt  in  the 
bush. 


IV. 

THE  PILLAR  IN  GOD'S  TEMPLE. 

"  Him  that  overcometh  will  I  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  my  God, 
and  he  shall  go  no  more  out ;  and  I  will  write  upon  him  the  name  of 
my  God,  and  the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God,  .  .  .  and  my  new 
name." —  Rev.  iii.  12. 

It  is  very  many  years  since  these  great  words  were 
sent  abroad  into  a  world  of  struggle.  We  can  hardly 
read  them  without  remembering  on  what  countless  souls 
they  have  fallen  in  a  shower  of  strength.  Men  and 
women  everywhere,  wrestling  with  life,  have  heard  the 
promise  to  "  him  that  overcometh ; "  and,  though  much  of 
the  imagery  in  which  the  promise  was  conveyed  was 
blind  to  them,  though  they  very  vaguely  identified 
their  conflict  with  the  battle  which  these  far-off  people 
in  the  Book  of  the  Revelation  were  engaged  in  fighting, 
still,  the  very  sound  of  the  words  has  brought  them  in- 
spiration. Let  us  study  the  promise  a  little  more  care- 
fully this  morning.  Perhaps  it  will  always  be  worth 
more  to  us  if  we  do.  A  text  which  we  have  once  studied 
is  like  a  star  upon  which  we  have  once  looked  through 
the  telescope.  We  always  see  it  afterwards,  full  of  the 
brightness  and  color  which  that  look  showed  us.  Even  if 
it  grows  dim  behind  a  cloud,  or  other  nearer  stars  seem 
to  outshine  it,  we  never  think  it  dull  or  small  after  we 
have  once  looked  deep  into  its  depths. 

"  To  him  that  overcometh,"  reads  the  promise  ;  and 


THE   PILLAR   IN    GOD'S   TEMPLE.  61 

the  first  thing  that  we  want  to  understand  is  what  the 
struggle  is  in  which  tlie  victory  is  to  be  won.  It  is  the 
Savior  Christ  who  speaks.  His  voice  comes  out  of 
the  mystery  and  glory  of  heaven  to  the  church  in  Phil- 
adelphia, and  this  book,  in  which  His  words  are  written, 
stands  last  in  the  New  Testament.  The  gospel  story  is 
all  told.  The  work  of  incarnation  and  redemption  is  all 
done.  Jesus  has  gone  back  to  His  Father,  and  now  is 
speaking  down  to  men  and  women  on  the  earth,  who 
are  engaged  there  in  the  special  struggle  for  which  He 
has  prepared  the  conditions,  and  to  which  it  has  been 
the  purpose  of  His  life  and  death  to  summon  them.  Let 
us  remember  that.  It  is  a  special  struggle.  It  is  not 
the  mere  human  fight  with  pain  and  difficulty  which 
every  living  mortal  meets.  It  is  not  the  wrestling  for 
place,  for  knowledge,  for  esteem,  for  any  of  the  prizes 
which  men  covet.  Nay,  it  is  not  absolutely  the  struggle 
after  righteousness ;  it  is  not  the  pure  desire  and  deter- 
mination to  escape  from  sin,  considered  simply  as  the 
aspiration  of  a  man's  own  nature  and  the  determination 
of  a  man's  own  will.  It  is  not  to  these  that  Christ  looks 
down  and  sends  His  promise.  He  had  called  out  a  special 
struggle  on  the  earth.  He  had  bidden  men  struggle 
after  goodness,  out  of  love  and  gratitude  and  loyalty  to 
Him. 

If  the  motive,  everywhere  and  always,  is  the  greatest 
and  most  important  part  of  every  action,  then  there  must 
always  be  a  difference  between  men  who  are  striving  to 
do  right  and  not  to  do  wrong,  according  to  the  love 
which  sets  them  striving.  If  it  is  love  of  themselves, 
their  struggle  will  be  one  thing.  If  it  is  love  of  the  ab- 
stract righteousness,  it  will  be  another.     If  it  is  love  of 


62  THE  PILLJLR  IN   GOD'S  TEMPLE. 

Christ,  it  will  be  still  another.  Jesus  is  talking  to  the 
men  and  women  there  among  the  Asian  mountains,  and 
to  the  hosts  of  men  and  women  who  were  to  come  after 
them  upon  the  earth,  who  should  be  fighters  against 
sin,  against  their  own  sin,  who  should  struggle  to  be  pure 
and  brave  and  true  and  spiritual  and  unselfish,  because 
tliey  loved  Christ,  because  He  had  lived  and  died  for 
them,  because  they  belonged  to  Him,  because  He  would 
be  honored  and  pleased  by  their  goodness,  grieved  and 
dishonored  by  their  wickedness ;  because  by  goodness 
they  would  come  into  completer  sympathy  with  Him, 
and  gain  a  fuller  measure  of  His  love.  It  is  to  men 
and  women  in  this  struggle  that  Christ  speaks,  and 
promises  them  the  appropriate  reward  which  belongs  to 
perseverance  and  success  in  just  that  obedience  of  loy- 
alty and  love. 

For  one  of  the  discoveries  that  we  make,  as  soon  as 
we  grow  thoughtful  about  life  at  all,  is  that  the  world  is 
liot  merely  full  of  struggle,  but  full  of  many  kinds  of 
struggle,  which  vary  very  much  in  value.  We  begin 
by  very  broad  and  superficial  classifications.  Men  are 
happy  or  unhappy ;  men  are  wise  or  foolish ;  men  are 
generous  or  stingy.  But  by  and  by  such  broad  divisions 
will  not  satisfy  us.  The  great  regions  into  which  we 
have  classified  our  fellow-men  begin  to  break  up  and 
divide.  There  are  all  kinds  of  happiness,  all  kinds  of 
wisdom,  all  kinds  of  generosity.  It  means  little  to  us, 
when  we  have  once  found  this  out,  to  be  told  that  a 
man  is  happy,  wise,  or  generous,  until  we  have  learned 
also  the  special  quality  of  this  quality  as  it  appears  in 
him,  how  he  came  to  possess  it,  and  how  he  works  it  out 
in  life.     And  so  in  all  the  world-fuU  of  struggling  men, 


THE  PILLAR   IN   GOD's   TEMPLE.  63 

as  we  observe  them  we  find  by  and  by  that  there  are  dif- 
ferences. A  great,  broad  mass  of  eager,  dissatisfied,  ex- 
pectant faces  it  appears  at  first;  a  wild  and  restless 
tossing  hither  and  thither,  as  if  a  great  ship  had  broken 
asunder  in  mid^ocean,  and  her  frightened  people,  with 
one  common  fear  and  dread  of  being  drowned,  were 
atruggling  indiscriminately  in  the  waves.  But  at  last 
all  that  changes,  and  we  wonder  how  it  ever  could  have 
looked  so  to  us.  Struggle  comes  to  seem  as  various 
as  life.  The  objects  for  which  men  struggle,  and  the 
strength  by  which  men  struggle,  grow  endlessly  various. 
And  then,  among  the  mass  that  seemed  one  general  and 
monotoncus  turmoil,  there  stand  out  these  —  there  shine 
out  these  —  whose  struggle  is  against  sin,  for  holiness,  and 
by  the  love  of  Christ.  Other  men  struggle  against  pov- 
erty, against  neglect ;  for  ease,  for  power,  for  fame  ;  and  by 
the  love  of  self,  the  noble  abstract  love  of  righteousness ; 
but,  scattered  through  the  whole  mass  thickly  enough 
to  give  it  character  and  add  a  new,  controlling  strain  to 
the  eternal  music  of  aspiring  discontent  which  rises  from 
the  swarm  of  human  living,  there  are  these  stragglers 
against  sin,  by  the  love  of  Christ.  They  are  by  your 
side.  They  are  in  your  houses.  They  meet  you  in  the 
street.  Your  children  are  catching  sight  of  that  struggle, 
and  its  fascination  and  its  power,  in  the  times  when  they 
are  silent  and  thoughtful,  and  seem  to  be  passing  out  of 
your  familiar  understanding.  Your  friend,  whose  care- 
lessness concerning  the  things  about  which  you  are  eager 
seems  so  strange  to  you,  is  careless  about  them  only  be- 
cause he  is  fighting  a  deeper  fight.  He  is  fighting  against 
sin,  by  the  love  of  Christ.  Therefore,  he  does  not  dread 
the  poverty  and  the  unpopularity  against  which  your 
selfishness  makes  you  so  eager  to  fear  and  fight. 


64  THE   PILLAR  IN   GOD'S  TEMPLE. 

This  then  is  the  peculiar  struggle  to  the  victory  in 
which  Christ,  out  of  heaven,  gives  His  promise.  And 
now  the  promise  can  be  understood  if  we  understand  the 
struggle.  The  two  belong  together.  "  Him  that  over- 
cometh  will  I  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  my  God, 
and  he  shall  go  no  more  out."  The  ideas  of  the  pillar 
in  a  building,  in  a  temple,  are  these  two :  incorporation 
and  permanence.  The  pillar  is  part  of  the  structure ; 
and  when  it  is  once  set  in  its  place  it  is  to  be  there  as 
long  as  the  temple  stands.  How  clear  the  picture  stands 
before  us.  There  is  a  great,  bright,  solemn  temple, 
where  men  come  to  worship.  Its  doors  are  ever  open  ; 
its  windows  tempt  the  sky.  There  are  many  and  many 
things  which  have  to  do  with  such  a  temple.  The 
winds  come  wandering  through  its  high  arches.  Perhaps 
the  birds  stray  in  and  build  their  nests,  and  stray  away 
asain  when  the  short  summer  is  done.  The  children 
roam  across  its  threshold,  and  play  for  a  few  moments 
on  its  shining  floor.  Banners  and  draperies  are  hung 
upon  its  walls  awhile,  and  then  carried  away.  Poor 
men  and  women,  with  their  burdens  and  distress,  come 
in  and  say  a  moment's  prayer,  and  hurry  out.  Stately 
processions  pass  from  door  to  door,  making  a  brief  dis- 
turbance in  its  quiet  air.  Generation  after  generation 
comes  and  goes  and  is  forgotten,  each  giving  its  place 
up  to  another ;  while  still  the  temple  stands,  receiving 
and  dismissing  them  in  turn,  and  outlivino-  them  all. 
All  these  are  transitory.  All  these  come  into  the  temple 
and  then  go  out  again.  But  a  day  comes  when  the 
great  temple  needs  enlargement.  The  plan  which  it 
embodies  must  be  made  more  perfect.  It  is  to  grow  to 
a  completer  self.    And  then  tliey  bring  up  to  the  doors  a 


THE   PILLAR  IN   GOD'S   TEMPLE.  65 

column  of  cut  stone,  hewn  in  the  quarry  for  this  very 
place,  fitted  and  fit  for  this  place  and  no  other ;  and, 
bringing  it  in  with  toil,  they  set  it  solidly  down  as  part 
of  the  growing  structure,  part  of  the  expanding  plan. 
It  blends  with  all  the  other  stones.  It  loses  while  it 
keeps  its  individuality.  It  is  useless,  except  there  where 
it  is  ;  and  yet  there,  where  it  is,  it  has  a  use  which  is 
peculiarly  its  own,  and  different  from  every  other  stone's. 
The  walls  are  built  around  it.  It  shares  the  building's 
changes.  The  reverence  that  men  do  to  the  sacred  place 
falls  upon  it.  The  lights  of  sacred  festivals  shine  on  its 
face.  It  glows  in  the  morning  sunlight,  and  grows  dim 
and  solemn  as  the  dusk  gathers  through  the  great  ex- 
panse. Generations  pass  before  it  in  their  worship. 
They  come  and  go,  and  the  new  generations  follow  them, 
and  still  the  pillar  stands.  The  day  when  it  was  hewn 
and  set  there  is  forgotten  ;  as  children  never  think  when 
an  old  patriarch,  whom  they  see  standing  among  them, 
was  born.  It  is  part  of  the  temple  where  the  men  so 
long  dead  set  it  so  long  ago.  From  the  day  that  they 
set  it  there,  it  "  goes  no  more  out." 

Can  we  not  see  perfectly  the  meaning  of  the  figure  ? 
There  are  men  and  women  everywhere  who  have  some- 
thing to  do  with  God.  They  cannot  help  touching  and 
being  touched  by  Him,  and  His  vast  purposes,  and  the 
treatment  which  He  is  giving  to  the  world.  They  cross 
and  recross  the  pavement  of  His  providence.  They 
come  to  Him  for  what  they  want,  and  He  gives  it  to 
them,  and  they  carry  it  away.  They  ask  Him  for  bread, 
and  then  carry  it  off  into  the  chambers  of  their  own  self- 
ishness and  eat  it.  They  ask  Him  for  power,  and  then 
go  off  to  the  battlefields  or  workshops  of  their  own  self- 

5 


66  THE  PILLAR  IN   GOD's   TEMPLE. 

isliness  and  use  it.  They  are  forever  going  in  and  out 
of  the  presence  of  God.  They  sweep  through  His  tem- 
ple like  the  wandering  wind ;  or  they  come  in  like  the 
chance  worshipper,  and  bend  a  moment's  knee  before  the 
altar.  And  then  there  are  the  other  men  who  are  strusr- 
gliug  to  escape  from  sin,  by  the  love  of  Christ.  How 
different  they  are.  The  end  of  everything  for  them  is  to 
get  to  Christ,  and  put  themselves  in  Him,  and  stay  there. 
They  do  not  so  much  want  to  get  to  Christ  that  they 
may  get  away  from  sin,  as  they  want  to  get  away  from 
sin  that  they  may  get  to  Christ.  God  is  to  them  not 
merely  a  great  helper  of  their  plans ;  He  is  the  sum  of 
all  their  plans,  the  end  of  all  their  wishes,  the  Being  to 
whom  their  souls  say,  not "  Lord,  help  me  do  what  I  will ; " 
but,  "  Lord,  show  me  Thy  will  that  I  may  make  it  mine, 
and  serve  myself  in  serving  Thee."  "When  such  a  soul 
as  that  comes  to  Christ,  it  is  like  the  day  when  the 
marble  column  from  the  quarry  was  dragged  up  and  set 
into  the  temple  aisle.  Such  a  soul  becomes  part  of  the 
great  purpose  of  God.  It  can  go  no  more  out.  It  has 
no  purpose  or  meaning  outside  of  God.  Its  life  is  hid 
there  in  the  sacred  aisles  of  God's  life.  If  God's  life 
grows  dark,  the  dusk  gathers  around  this  pillar  which 
is  set  in  it.  If  God's  life  brightens,  the  pillar  burns  and 
glows.  Men  who  behold  this  soul,  tliink  instantly  of 
God.  They  cannot  picture  the  pillar  outside  of  the 
temple ;  they  cannot  picture  the  soul  outside  of  the  fear, 
the  love,  the  communion,  the  obedience  of  God. 

The  New  Testament  abounds  with  this  idea  and  the 
discrimination  which  we  have  been  trying  to  make. 
When  the  Prodigal  Son  comes  back  to  his  Father,  he 
cries  out,  "  I   am   not  worthy  to  be  called  Thy  son ; 


THE  PILLAR  IN   GOD'S  TEMPLE.  67 

make  me  as  one  of  Thy  hired  servants  ; "  but  the  Father 
answers,  "  This,  My  son,  was  dead,  and  is  alive  again  ;" 
and  the  pillar  is  set  up  in  the  temple.  When  Jesus 
looks  into  His  disciples'  faces  at  the  last  supper.  He  says : 
"  Henceforth  I  call  you  not  servants,  for  the  servant 
knoweth  not  what  his  Lord  doeth ;  but  I  have  called 
you  friends,  for  all  things  which  I  have  heard  of  my 
Father  I  have  made  known  unto  you."  The  servant  is 
the  drapery  hung  upon  the  nails  ;  the  friend  is  the  pillar 
built  into  the  wall.  Paul  writes  to  the  Romans  :  "  Who 
shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ  ?  Shall  tribu- 
lation, or  distress,  or  persecution,  or  famine,  or  naked- 
ness, or  peril,  or  sword  ?  I  am  persuaded  that  neither 
death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  powers, 
nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height,  nor 
depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to  separate 
us  from  the  love  of  God."  It  is  the  calm  assurance 
of  the  pillar  which  feels  the  pressure  of  the  wall  around 
it,  and  defies  any  temptation  to  entice  it,  or  any  force  to 
tear  it  away. 

Nor  is  there  anything  unphilosophical,  or  unintelli- 
gible, or  merely  mystical  in  all  this.  The  same  thing 
essentially  occurs  everywhere.  Two  men  both  come  to 
know  another  man,  richer  and  larger  than  either  of  them. 
Something  called  friendship  grows  up  between  each  of 
them  and  him.  But  the  first  of  the  two  men  who  seek 
tliis  greater  man,  comes  and  goes  into  and  out  of  his 
great  neighbor's  life.  He  keeps  the  purposes  of  his 
own  life  distinct.  He  comes  to  his  rich  friend  for 
knowledge,  for  strength,  for  inspiration,  and  then  he 
carries  them  off  and  uses  them  for  his  own  ends.  The 
other  frieTid  gives  up  all  ends  in  life  which   he  has 


68  THE   PILLAR   IN   GOD's   TEMPLE. 

valued,  and  makes  this  new  man's,  this  greater  man's 
purposes,  his.  He  wants  what  this  great  man  wants, 
because  this  great  man  wants  it.  Naturally  and  easily 
we  say  that  he  "  lives  in  "  tliis  other  man.  By  and  hj 
you  cannot  conceive  of  him  as  separate  from  this  greater 
life.  The  reward  of  his  loving  devotion  is  that  he  is 
made  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  his  friend,  and  goes  no 
more  out. 

Two  men  both  love  their  country.  One  loves  her 
because  of  the  advantage  that  he  gets  from  her,  the 
help  that  she  gives  to  his  peculiar  interests.  The  other 
loves  her  for  herself,  for  her  embodiment  of  the  ideas 
which  he  believes  are  truest  and  divinest  and  most 
human.  One  uses  the  country.  The  other  asks  the 
country  to  use  him.  One  goes  into  the  countrj^'s  ser- 
vice and  gathers  up  money  or  knowledge  or  strength, 
and  then,  as  it  were,  goes  out  and  carries  them  with 
him  to  help  the  tasks  which  he  has  to  do  in  his  own 
private  life.  The  other  takes  all  his  private  interests, 
and  sacrifices  them  to  the  country's  good.  And  what  is 
the  reward  of  this  supreme  devotion,  which  there  will 
always  be  some  little  group  of  supremely  patriotic  men 
ready  to  make  in  every  healthy  state  ?  Will  they  not 
belong  to  the  state,  and  will  it  not  belong  continually 
to  them  ?  They  will  never  be  lost  out  of  its  history. 
They  will  become  its  pillars  and  share  its  glory,  as  they 
helped  to  support  its  life. 

The  same  is  true  about  the  church.  There  are  the 
multitudes  who  go  in  and  out,  who  count  the  church  as 
theirs,  who  gather  from  her  thought,  knowledge,  the 
comfort  of  good  company,  the  sense  of  safety ;  and  then 
there  are  others  who  think  they  truly,  as  the  light  phrase 


THE   PILLAR   IN   GOD'S   TEMPLE.  69 

SO  deeply  means,  "  belong  to  the  church."  They  are  given 
to  it,  and  no  compulsion  could  separate  them  from  it. 
They  are  part  of  its  structure.  They  are  its  pillars. 
Here  and  hereafter  they  can  never  go  out  of  it.  Life 
would  mean  nothing  to  them  outside  the  church  of 
Christ. 

And,  to  give  just  one  more  example,  so  it  is  with 
truth.  The  men  who  seek  truth  for  what  she  has  to 
give  them,  who  want  to  be  scholars  for  the  emoluments, 
the  honors,  the  associations,  which  scholarship  will  bring, 
these  are  the  men  who  will  turn  away  from  truth  so 
soon  as  she  has  given  them  her  gifts,  and  leave  herself 
dishonored,  —  who  wiU  turn  away  from  any  truth  which 
has  no  gifts  to  give.  But,  always,  there  are  a  few  seekers 
who  want  truth's  self,  and  not  her  gifts.  Once  scholars, 
they  are  scholars  always.  They  really  put  their  lives 
into  the  structure  of  the  world's  advancing  knowledge. 
There  those  lives  always  remain,  like  solid  stones  for  the 
scholarship  of  the  years  to  come  to  build  upon.  There 
is  no  world  conceivable  to  which  their  souls  can  go, 
where  they  will  not  turn  to  seek  what  it  is  possible  there 
for  souls  like  theirs  to  know. 

Thus  everywhere,  in  every  interest  of  human  life,  there 
is  a  deeper  entrance  and  a  more  permanent  abiding  which 
is  reserved  for  those  who  have  come  into  the  profoundest 
sympathy  with  its  principles,  and  the  most  thorough  un- 
selfish consecration  to  its  work.  Come  back,  then,  from 
these  illustrations,  to  the  Christian  life,  and  see  there  the 
larger  exhibition  of  the  same  law  which  they  illustrate. 
God  is  the  Governor  of  all  the  world.  The  purpose  of 
His  government,  the  one  design  on  which  it  all  pro- 
ceeds, is  that  the  whole  world,  through  obedience  to 


70  THE  PILLAR  IN   GOD's   TEMPLE. 

Him,  should  be  wrought  into  His  likeness,  and  made 
the  utterance  of  His  character.  Let  that  thought  dwell 
before  your  mind,  and  feel,  as  you  must  feel,  what  a  sub- 
lime and  glorious  picture  it  involves.  Then  remember 
that  God  does  not  treat  the  world  in  one  great,  vague 
generality.  He  sees  the  world  all  made  up  of  free  souls, 
of  men  and  women.  The  world  can  become  like 
Him  by  obedience,  only  as  the  souls  of  men  and  women 
become  like  Him  by  obedience.  Each  soul,  your  soul 
and  mine,  must  enter  into  that  consummation,  must 
realize  the  idea  of  that  picture  by  itself,  by  its  own  free 
submission ;  helped,  no  doubt,  by  the  movement  of  souls 
all  about  it,  and  by  the  great  promise  of  the  world's  sal- 
vation, but  yet  acting  for  itself,  by  its  own  personal 
resolve.  To  each  soul,  then,  to  yours  and  mine,  God  brings 
aU  the  material  of  this  terrestrial  struggle,  —  all  the 
temptations,  all  the  disappointments,  all  the  successes, 
all  the  doubts  and  perplexities,  all  the  jarring  of  inter- 
ests, all  the  chances  of  hinderance  and  chances  of  help 
which  come  flocking  about  every  new-born  life.  The 
struggle  begins,  begins  with  every  living  creature,  is  be- 
ginning to-day  with  these  boys  and  girls  about  you,  just 
as  you  can  remember  that  years  and  years  ago  it  began 
with  you.  What  is  it  to  succeed  in  that  struggle  ? 
What  success  shall  you  set  before  them  to  excite  their 
hope  and  energy  ?  On  what  success  shall  you  con- 
gratulate yourself  ?  Is  it  success  in  the  struggle  of  life 
simply  to  get  through  with  decency  and  die  without  dis- 
grace or  shame  ?  Is  it  success  in  the  struggle  of  life 
just  to  have  so  laid  hold  on  God's  mercy,  to  have  so 
made  our  peace  with  Him,  that  we  know  we  shall 
not   be  punished  for  our  sins  ?     Is  it  success  in  the 


THE  PILLAR  IN   GOD'S  TEMPLE.  71 

struggle  of  life  even  to  have  so  lived  in  His  presence 
that  every  day  has  been  bright  with  the  sense  that  He 
was  taking  care  of  us  ?  These  things  are  very  good  ; 
but  if  the  purpose  of  God's  government  of  the  world 
and  of  us  is  what  I  said,  then  the  real  victory  in  the 
struggle  can  be  nothing  less  than  the  accomplishment  in 
us  of  that  which  it  is  the  object  of  all  His  government 
to  accomplish  in  the  world.  When,  truly  obedient,  we 
have  been  made  like  Him  whom  we  obey,  then,  only 
then,  we  have  overcome  in  tlie  struggle  of  life.  And 
then  we  must  be  piQars  in  His  temple.  With  wills 
harmonized  with  His  will ;  with  souls  that  love  and  hate 
in  truest  unison  of  sympathy  with  His ;  with  no  pur- 
poses left  in  us  but  His  purposes,  —  then  we  have  come 
to  what  He  wants  the  world  to  come  to.  We  have  taken 
our  places  in  the  slowly  rising  temple  of  His  wiU.  To 
whatever  worlds  He  carries  our  souls  when  they  shall 
pass  out  of  these  imprisoning  bodies,  in  those  worlds 
these  souls  of  ours  shall  find  themselves  part  of  the 
same  great  temple ;  for  it  belongs  not  to  this  earth  alone. 
There  can  be  no  end  of  the  universe  where  God  is,  to 
which  that  growing  temple  does  not  reach,  the  temple 
of  a  creation  to  be  wrought  at  last  into  a  perfect  utter- 
ance of  God  by  a  perfect  obedience  to  God. 

0  my  dear  friends,  that  is  the  victory  that  is  awaiting 
you.  Slowly,  through  all  the  universe,  that  temple  of 
God  is  being  buUt.  Wherever,  in  any  world,  a  soul,  by 
free -willed  obedience,  catches  the  fire  of  God's  likeness, 
it  is  set  into  the  growing  walls,  a  living  stone.  When, 
in  your  hard  fight,  in  your  tiresome  drudgery,  or  in  your 
terrible  temptation,  you  catch  the  purpose  of  your  being, 
and  give  yourself  to  God,  and  so  give  Him  the  chance  to 


72  THE  PILLAR  IN   GOD'S  TEMPLE. 

give  HimseK  to  you,  your  life,  a  living  stone,  is  taken 
up  and  set  into  that  growing  wall.  And  the  other  living, 
burning  stones  claim  and  welcome  and  embrace  it 
They  bind  it  in  with  themselves.  They  make  it  sure 
with  their  assurance,  and  they  gather  sureness  out  of 
it.  The  great  wall  of  divine  likeness  through  human 
obedience  grows  and  grows,  as  one  tried  and  purified  and 
ripened  life  after  another  is  laid  into  it ;  and  down  at 
the  base,  the  corner-stone  of  all,  there  lies  the  life  of 
Him  who,  though  He  was  a  son,  yet  learned  obedience 
by  the  things  which  He  suffered,  and,  being  made  perfect, 
became  the  author  of  eternal  salvation  unto  all  them  that 
obey  Him. 

In  what  strange  quarries  and  stone-yards  the  stones 
for  that  celestial  wall  are  being  hewn  !  Out  of  the  hill- 
sides of  humiliated  pride ;  deep  in  the  darkness  of  crushed 
despair ;  in  the  fretting  and  dusty  atmosphere  of  little 
cares  ;  in  the  hard,  cruel  contacts  that  man  has  with  man ; 
wherever  souls  are  being  tried  and  ripened,  in  what- 
ever commonplace  and  homely  ways  ;  —  there  God  is 
hewing  out  the  pillars  for  His  temple.  O,  if  the  stone 
can  only  have  some  vision  of  the  temple  of  which  it  is 
to  lie  a  part  forever,  what  patience  must  fill  it  as  it 
feels  the  blows  of  the  hammer,  and  knows  that  success 
for  it  is  simply  to  let  itself  be  wrought  into  what  shape 
the  Master  wills. 

Upon  the  pillar  thus  wrought  into  the  temple  of 
God's  loving  kingdom  there  are  three  inscriptions.  I 
can  only  in  one  word  ask  you  to  remember  what  they 
are :  "  I  will  write  upon  him  the  name  of  my  God,  and 
the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God,  and  my  new  name." 


THE  PILLAR  IN   GOD'S   TEMPLE.  73 

The  soul  that  in  obedience  to  God  is  growing  into  His 
likeness,  is  dedicated  to  the  divine  love,  to  the  hope  of 
the  perfect  society,  and  to  the  ever  new  knowledge  of 
redemption  and  the  great  Eedeemer.  Those  are  its  hopes ; 
and,  reaching  out  forever  and  ever,  all  through  eternity, 
those  hopes  it  never  can  exhaust.  Those  writings  on  the 
pillar  shall  burn  with  purer  and  brighter  fire  the  longer 
that  the  pillar  stands  in  the  temple  of  Him  whom  Jesus 
caUs  "  My  God." 

May  all  this  great  promise  ennoble  and  illumine  the 
struggle  of  our  life ;  keep  us  from  ever  thinking  that  it 
is  mean  and  little ;  lift  us  above  its  details  while  it  keeps 
us  forever  faithful  to  them ;  and  give  us  victory  at  last 
through  Him  who  has  already  overcome. 


V. 

THE  EYE  OF  THE  SOUL. 

"The  light  of  the  body  is  the  eye:  if,  therefore,  thine  eye  be  single, 
thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light." — Matt,  vL  22. 

It  sometimes  seems  to  me  as  if,  in  our  Christian  ear- 
nestness and  eagerness  to  establish  the  authority  of  the 
words  of  Jesus,  and  to  enforce  their  application,  we 
were  in  danger  of  neglecting  to  seek  their  deepest  mean- 
ing and  full  interpretation.  These  three  questions  every 
thoughtful  and  conscientious  disciple  must  ask  about 
his  Master:  first,  Why  should  I  believe  His  teach- 
ings ?  third,  What  ought  my  belief  in  His  teachings  to 
make  me  do  ?  but  certainly  also,  second,  What  do  His 
teachings  mean  ?  Without  the  serious  asking  and  care- 
ful answering  of  this  second  question,  the  answering  of 
the  first  question  must  be  well-nigh  useless,  and  the 
correct  and  full  answering  of  the  third  question  must 
be,  in  great  degree,  impossible. 

All  this  is  true  of  every  word  of  Jesus ;  but  it  is 
specially  true  with  regard  to  certain  great  words  of  His, 
in  which  it  seems  as  if  He  summed  up  the  principles 
of  His  teaching,  and  gave  a  comprehensive  statement  of 
His  work.  Such  words  there  are  ;  words  which  rise  like 
mountains  in  the  midst  of  His  discourse,  and  seem  to 
draw  up,  into  conclusive  points,  the  whole  expanse  of 
His  great  teaching.     They  are  not  deliberate  and  formal. 


THE  EYE   OF  THE  SOUL.  75 

He  does  not  turn  aside  from  His  work  of  saving  the 
world,  to  deliver  lectures  on  theology.  These  compre- 
hensive words  of  His  grow  naturally  out  of  the  ordinary 
circumstances  and  conversations  into  which  He  fell ; 
but  in  them  there  meet  the  currents  of  His  thought, 
and  the  great  final  truths  of  man  and  God  lie  open  to 
the  mind  that  reverently  tries  to  understand  them. 
Surely  such  words  tempt  and  deserve  our  most  reverent 
and  loving  study. 

It  is  one  of  these  words  of  Jesus  that  I  have  chosen 
for  my  text  this  morning.  I  choose  it  because  it  seems 
to  me  to  have  something  to  say  very  directly  to  some 
of  the  questions  about  the  possibility  of  knowing  about 
God,  and  the  way  of  knowing  about  God,  which  one 
hears  asked  with  most  astonishing  frequency  and  most 
impressive  earnestness  in  these  days  and  places.  In 
this  utterance  Jesus,  I  think,  makes  it  wonderfully  clear 
how  man  must  hope  to  know  those  spiritual  things, 
without  some  knowledge  of  which  the  heart  of  man  is 
not  and  cannot  be  content ;  after  which  man  is  forever 
struggling ;  and  the  despair  of  which  makes  the  great 
gloom  which  in  these  days  seems,  to  some  prophets,  to 
be  settling  down  upon  the  human  soul. 

Jesus  builds  all  His  teaching  upon  an  illustrative 
figure  which  every  one  could  then,  and  can  always,  un- 
derstand. "  The  light  of  the  body  is  the  eye,"  He  said. 
Try  to  get  the  picture  back  before  your  mind.  These 
words  are  part  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  On  a 
bright,  fresh  morning,  Jesus  is  sitting  half-way  up  a 
hillside  in  Galilee,  with  a  group  of  attentive  hearers 
clustered  at  his  side.  All  around  Him  is  the  radiant 
landscape.     Almost  at  the  mountain's  foot  the  lake  of 


76  THE   EYE   OF  THE   SOUL. 

Galilee  is  flashing  in  the  morning  sun.  The  soft 
rounded  hills  roll  away  like  waves  on  every  side,  the 
quiet  valleys  nestling  in  between  them.  Here  and 
there  the  little  white  villages  give  life  and  movement  to 
the  scene.  The  birds  fly  through  the  air ;  the  cattle  are 
plodding  at  their  tasks ;  all  the  earth  seems  bright  and 
fresh  and  clear,  full  of  vitality  and  beauty.  And  then 
here,  close  around  Him,  are  these  men  with  all  their 
sensitiveness,  all  their  human  power  to  enjoy  and  un- 
derstand this  world,  —  these  men  whose  understanding 
and  enjoyment  of  it  seem  to  give  worthiness  and  dig- 
nity to  all  this  outward  nature.  They  are  the  other 
half  of  the  picture  in  the  mind  of  Jesus.  Nature  and 
man,  these  two,  make  up  the  world  for  Him.  The 
hills  and  rocks  and  trees  and  beasts  and  villages,  and 
the  sun  shining  on  them  all,  —  that  on  one  side  ;  and  on 
the  other,  —  man,  with  his  power  of  knowing  what  all 
these  things  mean,  of  loving  them,  of  thinking  about 
them,  of  using  them.  The  world  of  nature  radiant  with 
light ;  the  soul  of  man  rich  in  intelhgence,  —  these  two 
facing  and  claiming  each  other  on  that  bright  morning 
in  Syria,  as  they  have  faced  and  claimed  each  other 
every  day  since  God  said,  "  Let  us  make  man,"  and 
Adam  began  to  live  in  Eden.  And  now,  as  Jesus  looks 
at  all  this,  He  begins  to  praise  the  human  eye.  "  The 
light  of  the  body  is  the  eye,"  He  says.  What  does  He 
mean  by  that  ?  Is  it  not  that  He  is  rejoicing  in  the 
one  appointed  channel  through  which  these  two  halves 
of  the  world  may  come  into  connection  ?  Nature  and 
man  must  stand  apart,  not  two  halves  of  one  world, 
but  two  separate  worlds,  were  it  not  for  that  marvellous 
and   precious   avenue   of  sight  which   brings  the  two 


THE  EYE  OF  THE   SOUL.  77 

together,  and  lets  the  man,  with  his  inner  power  of 
knowledge,  know  the  outer  world.  Through  it,  the  Lake 
of  Galilee  and  beautiful  Mount  Tabor  in  the  distance,  — 
aye,  and  the  dear,  sweet  face  of  the  Lord  himself,  —  flow 
in  upon  the  soul  of  John,  and  become  a  part  of  him. 
Without  the  eye  the  world  might  still  be  real ;  but  it 
must  be  forever  unknowable  to  this  man,  able  to  know 
it,  but  sitting  in  the  prison  of  his  sightlessness  where 
all  the  glory  cannot  reach  him.  He  opens  the  window 
of  his  eye  and  it  all  comes  pouring  in ;  runs  through 
his  frame  and  finds  out  his  intelligence;  says  to  his 
brain :  "  Here  I  am,  know  me  ! "  Says  to  his  heart : 
"  Here  I  am,  love  me ! "  To  the  man  sitting  in 
darkness,  the  whole  bright  world  has  sprung  to  life ; 
and  the  window  of  the  prison,  the  gateway  of  the  en- 
tering glory,  the  light  of  the  body  is  the  eye. 

So  Jesus  spoke ;  and  we  can  well  imagine  that  His 
words  awoke  some  new  grateful  delight  in  their  own 
blessed  power  of  vision  among  those  thoughtful  men  who 
heard  Him.  But  it  was  not  for  that  purpose  that  he  had 
spoken.  He  was  not  lecturing  on  optics.  The  visible 
world,  and  its  entrance  to  the  human  intelligence  through 
the  eye,  was  but  an  illustration.  His  thought  was 
aimed  through  the  illustration  at  that  which  it  was  the 
purpose  of  His  life  to  teach  mankind.  He  was  thinking 
of  the  world  of  unseen,  invisible,  spiritual  life ;  and  what 
He  meant  to  say  by  His  suggestive  picture  must  have 
been  that  that  world,  too,  must  and  could  testify  itself, 
report  itself  to  the  human  intelligence  through  its  ap- 
propriate channel  of  communication,  just  exactly  as  the 
world  of  visible  nature  manifests  and  reports  itself 
through  the  organ  of  the  eye.     Now  it  is  just  the  exist- 


78  THE  EYE   OF  THE  SOUL. 

ence  of  that  spiritual  world,  and  the  possibility  of  man's 
being  in  communication  with  it,  intelligently  knowing 
it,  intelligently  loving  it,  —  that  it  is  about  which 
man's  profoundest  hopes  and  fears  have  always  clustered, 
about  which  they  are  clustering  to-day,  perhaps  more 
anxiously  than  ever  yet.  It  is  a  world  certainly  that  is 
conceivable.  The  invisible  may  at  least  be  imagined, 
whether  it  can  be  believed  or  not.  All  man's  mental 
history  bears  witness  that  he  can  picture  to  himself  a 
world  in  which  the  true  existences  are  souls  instead  of 
bodies  ;  where  the  forces  are  not  those  which  any  physics 
can  measure,  but  the  temptations  and  aspirations  which 
only  the  spiritual  life  can  feel ;  where  the  issues  are  not 
those  of  physical  growth  or  catastrophe,  but  of  the 
culture  or  decay  of  character ;  and  whose  central  sun,  the 
source  and  fountain  of  whose  life,  is  not  a  burning  globe 
hung  in  the  heavens,  but  a  personal  God  who  feeds  all 
the  souls  of  His  children  with  His  love,  and  guides 
them  by  His  wisdom,  and  blesses  or  punishes  them  by 
His  judgment.  Those  are  the  components  of  that  spirit- 
ual world,  the  human  soul  and  God.  No  man  has  ever 
seen  either  of  them.  They  cannot  report  themselves 
through  the  eye.  But  Jesus  says  that  the  world  of 
which  they  are  the  constituents  is  a  real  world ;  and 
that  though  the  eye  cannot  give  them  admission  to  the 
intelligence  to  which  all  worlds  must  report  themselves 
before  they  can  become  part  of  the  life  of  man,  there  is 
an  organ  which  is  to  this  world  of  spiritual  life  what 
the  eye  of  the  body  is  to  a  world  of  trees  and  lakes. 

And  what  then  is  that  organ  ?  The  name  by  which 
it  is  best  known  is  Conscience;  and,  though  we  may 
have  to  remind  ourselves  before  we  finish  that  some  of 


THE   EYE   OF  THE   SOUL.  79 

the  ordinary  uses  of  that  word  make  it  too  small  and 
meagre,  yet  we  may  freely  use  the  name  of  Conscience 
to  represent  that  organ  which  stands  between  the  intel- 
ligence of  man  and  the  spiritual  world,  just  as  the  eye 
stands  between  the  intelligence  of  man  and  the  world  of 
physical  nature,  and  brings  the  two  together.  This  is 
Christ's  doctrine  in  many  places.  He  that  uses  his 
conscience,  he  that  means  to  do  what  is  right  out  of 
obedience  to  God,  shall  come  to  the  knowledge  of 
God  and  of  his  own  soul.  That  is  the  plain,  unfigura- 
tive  statement  of  the  doctrine  which  He  is  constantly 
reiterating. 

And  we  can  see  how  His  doctrine  has  its  root  in  the 
nature  of  things.  Conscience  is  the  faculty  by  which 
we  judge  of  acts  as  right  or  wrong.  It  follows  then,  of 
necessity,  that  all  knowledge  of  the  deeper  natures  of 
things  by  which  they  become  possibly  the  instruments 
of  righteousness  or  wickedness,  and  all  knowledge  of 
those  deeper  and  higher  parts  of  the  universe  which  are 
capable  of  being  known  only  in  their  moral  characters, 
must  of  necessity  come  in  through  some  such  organ  or 
faculty  as  this,  which  each  man  knows  that  he  pos- 
sesses, and  by  which  he  says  of  characters,  "  This  is 
good  or  bad,"  just  as  by  his  eye  he  says  of  the  branch 
of  a  tree,  "  This  is  straight  or  crooked."  Is  not  that 
clear  ?  A  tree  is  growing  outside  your  window.  You, 
who  inside  the  window  are  sitting  with  your  face 
toward  the  tree,  are  blind.  Some  miracle  touches  you 
and  you  get  your  sight.  Instantly  that  tree  leaps  into 
being  for  you,  and  by  the  channel  of  your  opened  eye- 
sight pours  the  recognition  of  itself  through  aU  your 
intelligence.     Just  so  God,  —  a  Being  whose  essence  is 


80  THE  EYE   OF  THE  SOUL. 

morality,  a  Being  who  is  good  and  who  loves  or  hates 
all  things  in  the  world  according  as  they  are  good  or 
bad,  —  God  is  here  before  you  ;  and  you  have  no  open 
conscience.  You  do  not  care  whether  things  are  right 
or  wrong.  You  have  no  perception  of  the  essential 
difference  between  right  and  wrong.  You  do  not  feel 
the  dreadfulness  of  being  bad,  the  beauty  of  being  good. 
You  are  not  trying  to  do  right.  You  are  not  trying  to 
keep  from  doing  wrong.  By  and  by,  suddenly  or 
gradually,  all  that  changes.  Your  shut  conscience 
opens.  I  "Will  not  ask  now  what  makes  it  open.  I 
will  not  speak  now  of  the  power  which  the  world  of 
God  beyond  the  conscience  may  have  to  tempt  the 
conscience  into  activity.  Let  us  simply  watch  the 
fact.  You  do  begin  to  feel  the  difference  of  right  and 
wrong.  You  begin  to  try  to  do  right.  And  then  it  is, 
in  the  pursuance  of  that  effort,  that  there  become  gradu- 
ally impressed  upon  your  intelligence  certain  things 
which  had  found  no  recognition  there  before.  The 
spiritual  nature  of  the  world ;  that  all  this  mass  of 
things  and  events  is  fitted  for  and  naturally  struggles 
towards  the  education  of  character ;  —  the  spiritual  na- 
ture of  man ;  the  truth  that  man  is  fully  satisfied  only 
with  what  satisfies  his  soul,  only  with  character,  and 
with  an  endless  chance  for  that  character  to  grow ;  — 
and  God  ;  the  existence,  behind  all  standards  and  laws, 
of  righteousness,  of  a  perfectly  righteous  One,  from 
Whom  they  all  proceed  and  by  Whom  those  who  try 
to  foUow  them  are  both  judged  and  helped ;  —  these  are 
the  before  unseen  realities  which  come  pressing  into  your 
intelligence,  tempting,  demanding  your  recognition 
when  your  conscience  is  once  open,  when  you  have 


THE   EYE   OF  THE   SOUL.  81 

once  begun  to  live  in  the  desire  and  struggle  to  do 
right. 

Do  you  not  see  then  wliat  I  mean  when  I  say  that 
the  conscience  stands  between  man's  power  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  spiritual  world,  just  as  the  eye  stands 
between  man's  power  of  knowledge  and  the  world  of 
visible  nature  ?  It  is  the  opened  or  unopened  window 
through  which  flows  the  glorious  knowledge  of  God  and 
heaven ;  or  outside  of  which  that  knowledge  waits,  as 
the  sun  with  its  glory  or  the  flower  with  its  beauty 
waits  outside  the  closed  eye  of  a  blind  or  sleeping 
man. 

In  both  the  cases,  —  in  the  sight  through  the  eye  and 
the  sight  through  the  conscience, — the  intelligence  which 
waits  within,  and  does  not  yet  see  for  itself,  is  not,  of 
course,  shut  out  from  testimony.  If  a  man  is  thoroughly 
blind  and  never  sees  the  sun  himself,  other  men  who 
do  see  it  with  their  open  eyes  may,  no  doubt,  come  and 
tell  him  of  it ;  and  in  his  darkened  soul,  if  he  believes 
them,  there  grows  up  some  dim,  distorted  image  of  the 
sun  which  he  has  never  seen.  Nay,  other  senses  have 
some  stray  messages  to  tell  him  of  the  world,  whose  full 
revelation  can  come  only  through  the  opened  eye.  He 
feels  the  sun  in  its  warmth ;  he  smells  the  rose  in  its 
sweetness  ;  he  tastes  the  flavor  of  the  peach.  Through 
these  chinks  there  steal  in  some  tidings  of  the  wondrous 
world,  even  while  the  window  through  which  it  can 
report  itself  entirely  is  shut  and  shuttered.  I  am 
impressed  by  seeing  how  exactly  all  this  has  its  corre- 
spondent in  man's  knowledge  of  the  uuiverse  of  spirit- 
ual things.  There  too,  through  testimony  and  through 
sideway  and  accidental  intimations,  as   it   were,   some 

6 


82  THE  EYE  OF  THE  SOUL. 

knowledge  comes  even  when  conscience  is  shut  and  no 
struggle  to  do  right  is  urging  it  open  to  its  work. 
Some  man  who  knows  that  there  is  a  God,  and  that  the 
soul  is  precious  and  immortal,  comes  and  tells  me  so. 
The  Bible  speaks  it  with  such  power  that  I  cannot  dis- 
believe. Nay,  the  things  that  are  spiritual  bring  their 
own  sidelong  testimonies  of  themselves.  They  touch 
my  sense  of  beauty.  They  make  me  feel  how  good  it 
would  be  for  the  world  if  they  were  true.  I  hear  their 
movement  in  the  depths  of  history.  In  all  these  ways 
they  do  not  leave  themselves  unwitnessed.  These  are 
the  ways  in  which,  while  I  am  most  unconscientious  and 
least  anxious  to  do  right,  I  may  still  know  that  God 
and  spirit  are  the  basis  and  the  issue  of  the  world. 
Yet  still,  in  spite  of  all  this,  there  stands  the  separate 
glory  of  the  revelation  of  that  day  when  to  me,  at  last 
beginning  to  try  to  do  right,  the  God  whose  faint 
reports  have  come  to  me  pours  in  upon  my  opened 
soul  the  glorious  conviction  of  His  righteousness  and 
love ;  and  my  soul,  in  which  I  have  half  believed, 
becomes  the  centre  of  my  life  ;  becomes  my  life,  that 
for  which  all  the  other  parts  of  me  are  made.  Then,  in 
the  knowledge  which  pours  through  my  opened  con- 
science, then  I  know  with  an  assurance  which  makes  all 
the  knowledge  that  I  had  before  seem  but  a  guess  and 
dim  suspicion. 

And  there  is  yet  another  point  of  resemblance  in  this 
comparison  of  the  eye  and  the  conscience,  which  is 
striking.  When  one  declares  thus,  that  through  the  con- 
science man  arrives  at  the  knowledge  of  unseen  things, 
and  conceptions  of  God  and  spiritual  force  and  immor- 
tality reveal  themselves  to  the  intelligence,  at  once  the 


THE  EYE   OF  THE  SOUL.  83 

suggestion  comes  from  some  one  who  is  listening,  "  Can 
we  be  sure  of  the  reality  of  what  thus  seems  to  be  made 
known  ?  How  can  we  be  sure  that  what  the  conscience 
sends  in  to  the  understanding  are  not  mere  creations  of 
its  own  ;  things  which  it  thinks  exist  because  it  seems 
to  need  them ;  mere  forms  in  which  it  has  been  led  to 
clothe  with  outward  and  substantial  life  its  own  emo- 
tions ? "  Everybody  knows  such  questions.  They  are 
thrown  up,  on  every  side,  to  the  man  who,  trying  to  do 
right,  thinks  that  through  his  effort  he  has  found  God. 
They  come  to  him  not  merely  from  other  men  ;  but  his 
own  heart,  suspecting  its  own  faiths  and  hopes,  suggests 
them.  But  now  think  how  exactly  they  are  the  same 
questions  which  have  always  haunted  man's  whole 
thought  about  his  vision  of  the  world  of  nature.  How 
often  we  are  told  that  none  of  us  can  prove  that  all 
these  things  which  our  eyes  see  have  any  real  existence 
outside  our  sense  of  sight ;  that  all  that  we  are  sure  of 
is  certain  sensations  and  impressions  in  our  own  brains. 
Are  not  then  the  questions  which  haunt  the  conscience 
the  same  as  those  which  haunt  the  eye  ?  And  as  the 
eye  deals  with  its  questions,  so  will  the  conscience 
always  deal  with  its.  A  conviction  of  the  reality  of 
what  it  sees,  which  is  a  part  of  its  consciousness  that  no 
suspicion  can  disturb ;  a  use  of  its  knowledge,  which 
brings  ever  a  more  and  more  complete  assurance  of  its 
trustworthiness,  —  these  are  the  practical  issue  of  every 
such  question  with  regard  to  what  the  brain  sees  through 
the  eye  ;  and  the  same  will  be  the  practical  issue  of 
every  question  with  regard  to  what  the  soul  sees  through 
the  conscience.  At  least  we  may  say  this,  that  it  would 
be  a  very  deep  confidence  indeed  if  the  soul  felt  as  sure 


84  THE  EYE  OF  THE  SOUL. 

of  God  as  the  mind  feels  of  nature.  This  we  feel  very 
deeply  in  these  days,  when  to  so  many  minds  the  cer- 
tainty of  nature  seems  to  stand  in  strong  contrast  with 
the  uncertainty  of  God.  It  is  much  if  we  can  see  that 
the  doubts  which  are  suggested  as  to  the  sight  of  the 
soul,  are  but  the  same  with  the  doubts  which  we  easily 
overcome  when  we  are  dealing  with  the  sight  of  the 
body. 

Before  the  parallel,  which  Christ's  illustration  sug- 
gests, is  quite  completely  apprehended,  there  is  one 
thing  more  which  we  ought  to  observe ;  and  the  obser- 
vation of  it  may  perhaps  touch  a  difficulty  which,  I  dare 
say,  has  suggested  itself  to  some  minds  while  I  have 
been  speaking.  "We  have  talked  as  if  all  that  was  neces- 
sary, in  order  that  the  eye  of  man  should  see  the  world 
of  nature,  was  that  the  eye  should  be  open  ;  but  we 
know  very  well  that  something  else  is  needed.  The 
world  of  nature  may  be  there  in  all  its  beauty,  but  the 
openest  eye  will  not  see  it,  if  it  be  not  turned  that  way. 
The  eye,  wide  open,  turned  to  the  blank  wall,  will  not 
see  the  mountain  and  the  meadow.  "  Open  your  eyes 
and  look  here,"  we  say  to  a  child  into  whose  intelligence 
we  want  the  wonder  of  nature  to  be  poured.  And  now, 
is  there  anything  that  corresponds  to  this  second  neces- 
sity in  the  case  of  conscience  and  its  perception  of 
spiritual  truth  ?  Surely  there  is.  There  is  an  openness 
of  conscience,  a  desire  and  struggle  to  do  right,  which 
is  distinctly  turned  away  from  God  and  the  world  of 
spiritual  things,  so  that,  even  if  they  were  there,  it 
would  not  see  them.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  an 
openness  of  conscience,  a  desire  and  struggle  to  do  right, 
which  is  turned   towards   God   and   the   supernatural, 


THE   EYE   OF  THE   SOUL.  85 

which  is  expectant  of  spiritual  revelation ;  and  to  that 
conscience  the  spiritual  revelation  comes.  This  does 
not  amount  to  saying  that  the  conscience  sees  what  it 
wants  to  see.  It  is  very  different  from  that.  Many 
things  the  conscience,  like  the  eye,  wants  to  see,  and 
does  not  see  them  because  they  do  not  exist.  But  those 
things  whicli  do  exist,  —  though  they  be  the  plainest  of 
realities,  —  no  conscience  can  see  which,  with  the  greatest 
scrupulousness  and  faithfulness,  is  turned  the  other  way 
and  expecting  revelation  from  another  quarter.  Does 
this  explain  nothing  ?  If  we  can  recall  a  time  when 
we  did  our  duty  just  as  faithfully  as  we  knew  how,  and 
found  all  our  duty  a  drudgery  and  toil,  —  a  time  when 
conscience  was  intensely,  almost  morbidly  scrupulous, 
and  would  not  rest ;  and  yet,  when,  for  a  purpose  of 
duty,  we  never  looked,  or  tried  to  look,  beyond  ourselves 
and  the  world  in  which  we  lived ;  when  we  tried  to  be 
good  because  we  were  ashamed  of  wickedness,  or  because 
wickedness  we  knew  would  bring  us  pain  ;  and  if, 
remembering  that  all  our  struggle  after  goodness  in 
those  days  brought  us  no  sight  of  God,  we  ask  ourselves 
what  such  a  failure  of  the  truly  open  conscience  meant, 
is  there  no  suggestion  of  an  answer  here  ?  It  was  the 
■open  eye  looking  down  and  not  up,  looking  away 
from  God  and  not  to  Him.  Of  course  it  did  not  see 
Him.  When  the  desire  to  do  right  began  to  turn  itself 
and  to  look  up ;  when  it  began  to  desire  to  obey  and 
please,  and  depend  upon,  whatever  highest  being  in  the 
universe  might  have  anything  to  do  with  that  soul  and 
its  struggles,  then  the  soul  knew  God.  The  man  who 
is  not  trying  to  do  right  at  all  may  stand  with  his  blind 
conscience  in  the  very  blaze  of  God's  presence  and  not 


86  THE  EYE  OF  THE   SOUL. 

see  Him.  The  man  who  is  trying  to  do  right  in  selfish- 
ness and  self-dependence  may  toil  on  unenlightened 
and  unaided.  The  man  who  is  trying  to  do  right  God- 
ward,  who  in  aU  his  scrupulousness  is  devoutly 
humble  and  hopeful  of  things  higher  than  himself,  to 
him,  through  the  openness  of  his  faithful  conscience, 
the  vision  comes,  and  he  sees  God. 

My  friends,  may  we  not  pause  a  moment  here  in  the 
midst  of  our  definitions,  and  let  ourselves  see  what  a 
sreat  truth  this  is  that  we  have  reached  ?  Is  it  then 
true  that  every  man  carries  about  with  him  such  a 
capacity  as  this  ?  This  impulse,  the  necessity  of  doing 
right,  of  struggling  with  temptation,  which  has  so  often 
seemed  to  make  life  a  hard  slavery, —  see  what  it  reaUy 
is  !  It  is  the  opening  of  the  organ  through  which  the 
whole  world  of  unseen  spiritual  light  and  life,  all  the 
being  and  power  and  love  of  God,  all  our  own  untold 
future  in  the  regions  of  immortal  growth,  may  flow  in 
on  us  and  become  real  and  influential  in  our  life.  That 
boy  keeping  himself  true  when  other  boys  are  tempting 
him  to  be  false,  keeping  himself  lofty  when  other  boys 
are  tempting  him  to  be  base,  he  is  no  toiler  in  a  tread- 
mill which  he  would  be  well  out  of  if  he  dared  but  leave 
it.  He  is  a  climber  of  the  delectable  mountains  from 
whose  height  he  shall  see  heaven  and  God.  And,  as  he 
climbs,  the  promise  of  the  vision  is  already  making  his 
dull  eyes  strong  and  fine,  so  that  when  the  vision  comes 
he  shall  be  able  to  look  right  into  its  deep  and  glorious 
heart.  "  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall 
see  God."  We  praise  the  hand,  the  ear,  the  eye,  the 
brain,  for  all  the  knowledge  they  so  wonderfully  bring 
to  man.     Is  there  among  them  all  any  organ  which  a 


THE   EYE   OF  THE   SOUL.  87 

man  should  honor  and  glorify  and  enshrine  in  such 
reverent  obedience  as  this,  the  Conscience ;  if  indeed, 
through  it,  God  and  the  unseen  world  of  God  may  come 
to  him,  and  his  poor  humanity  grow  rich  in  knowing 
them  ? 

And  so  we  are  led  quietly  onward  to  that  which 
Jesus  teaches  in  the  text  which  has  given  us  our  start- 
ing point  for  all  this  long  discussion,  — "  If  thine  eye 
be  single  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light ; "  the 
critical  importance  of  a  pure,  true  conscience,  of  a 
steady,  self-sacrificing  struggle  to  do  right  Godward. 
So  only  can  the  channel  be  kept  open,  through  which 
the  knowledge  of  God  and  of  the  spiritual  things  which 
belong  to  Him,  can  enter  into  our  souls.  0,  my  dear 
friends,  has  there  been  nothing  in  our  experience  which 
has  taught  us  to  understand  that  and  to  believe  it  ?  Is 
there  one  of  us  who  cannot  remember  how,  in  the  hours 
when  he  tried  to  do  what  was  right,  the  possibility  of 
God,  perhaps  the  certainty  of  God,  grew  clear  to  him, 
and  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  the  world  opened,  and  spirit- 
ual things  bore  direct  testimony  of  themselves  ?  And  is 
there  one  of  us  who  has  not  the  other  recollection  also, 
of  hours  when,  in  the  tumult  of  indulged  passion,  or  in 
times  when  we  let  ourselves  be  mean,  or  when  we  cared 
only  for  ourselves,  the  whole  world  of  spiritual  being, 
God,  heaven,  immortality,  the  power  of  divine  love,  the 
vast,  infinite  hopes,  aye,  even  the  spiritual  quality  of  our 
own  soul  itself,  —  all  seemed  to  fade  away  from  us  as 
the  landscape  fades  away  out  of  the  sight  of  the  eye 
when  blindness  drops  upon  it  ?  Still,  out  of  the  dark- 
ened landscape  may  come  mysterious  sounds  which  fill 
the  soul  with  fear ;  and  still,  out  of  the  hidden  world 


88  THE   EYE   OF   THE   SOUL. 

of  spiritual  life  may  come  to  the  sinful  and  unbelieving 
soul  whispers  of  dread  which  make  him  tremble  at  the 
unseen  presence  of  the  awful  verities  which  he  does  not 
believe  in.  But  all  true,  healthy,  inspiring  faith,  —  all 
knowledge  that  can  live  by  love  and  open  into  action, 
grows  dim  to  the  soul,  dimmer  and  ever  dimmer  as  it 
gives  itself  up  to  sin. 

All  this  seems  to  me  to  throw  so  much  light  upon  the 
nature  and  purpose  of  Christ's  incarnation.  Men  say : 
"  He  came  to  show  us  God."  Other  men  say,  "  No, 
but  He  came  to  save  us  from  our  sins."  Are  not  the 
two  really  one  ?  It  would  be  easy  to  ask  whether  He 
who  showed  men  God  must  not  save  them  from  their 
sins.  But  —  what  is  to  our  purpose  now  to  ask  —  must 
not  He  who  saved  men  from  their  sins  show  men  God  ? 
The  work  of  Jesus  was  to  make  men  do  right  God  ward ; 
to  make  men  do  right  not  merely  that  the  world  might 
be  more  quiet  and  peaceable  and  decent,  but  in  order 
that  into  souls  thus  open  through  their  consecrated  con- 
sciences, the  knowledge  of  that  God  might  enter  in 
whose  knowledge  is  eternal  life. 

Eemember  how  Jesus  always  found,  in  His  own  obe- 
dience to  His  Father,  the  secret  of  His  Father's  perpet- 
ual revelation  of  Himself  to  Him.  "  The  Father  hath 
not  left  me  alone,  for  I  do  always  those  things  that 
please  Him,"  He  said.  Those  words  are  the  key  to  it 
all.  He  did  right  Godward.  He  did  always  those 
things  that  pleased  God.  In  Him  was  neither  the  ab- 
stract meditation  and  study  of  divine  things  which  thinks 
that  the  knowledge  of  them  is  like  the  knowledge  of  the 
rocks  or  the  stars,  something  quite  independent  of 
moral  conditions  in  the  knower ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand, 


THE   EYE   OF  THE   SOUL.  89 

was  there  in  Him  that  mere  slavery  to  duty  on  its 
lower  grounds  of  economy  and  prudence,  which  often 
paralyzes  the  conscience  and  shuts  it  up  as  a  channel 
for  the  higher  knowledge.  He  did  right  Godward.  And 
if  in  the  wilderness,  when  the  devil  was  tempting  Him, 
He  came  for  any  instant  near  to  faltering,  a  large  part  of 
His  strength  of  resistance  must  have  been  in  the  cer- 
tainty that  if  He  yielded  and  sinned,  the  door  would 
close  through  which  the  perpetual  knowledge  of  His 
Father  was  forever  flowing  into  Him  and  filling  Him 
with  rich  joy  and  peace. 

And  what  His  own  life  was,  Jesus  is  always  trying  to 
make  the  lives  of  His  disciples  be.  He  is  always  trying 
to  lead  mento  do  right  with  hopes  and  expectations  > 
Godward.  '  Men  debate  again  whether  Jesus  is  a  human 
example  and  teacher,  or  a  divine  Power  and  Eedeemer. 
Surely  He  is  both,  and  between  the  two  there  is  no  con- 
flict. They  are  most  congruous.  Both  are  parts  of 
that  completeness  of  life  by  which  He  would  draw  the 
conscience  of  man  upward  and  make  it  clear  and  pure, 
so  that  through  it  the  knowledge  of  God  should  descend^ 
He  taught  men  holiness  by  His  example  and  His  words ; 
and  He  declared,  in  all  He  was  and  did,  the  love  ot 
God  ;  and  the  result  of  all  of  it,  to  John  and  Mary  and 
Nicodemus  and  the  Magdalen  and  countless  other  un- 
named disciples,  was  that  they  saw  God  through  con- 
sciences made  scrupulous  and  holy,  and  turned  to  God 
by  the  attraction  of  His  manifested  love. 

I  turn  to  the  consummate  act  of  His  life,  the  act  in 
which  His  life  was  all  summed  up,  and  I  see  all  this  in 
its  completeness.  I  look  at  Jesus  on  the  cross.  I  see 
Him  there  convicting  sin  by  the  sight  of  its  terrific  con- 


90  THE  EYE  OF  THE  SOUL. 

sequence.  I  see  Him  also  drawing  men's  souls  up, 
away  from  the  earth  and  from  themselves,  up  to  God, 
by  that  amazing  sign  of  how  God  loved  them.  And 
when  I  turn  from  looking  at  the  sufferer  and  look  into 
the  faces  of  those  men  and  women  to  whom  His  suffer- 
ing has  brought  its  power,  I  see  how,  in  the  struggle 
against  sin  under  the  power  of  the  love  of  God,  to 
which  the  cross  has  summoned  them,  they  are  knowing 
God ;  how,  in  St.  Paul's  great  words,  "  the  God  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Father  of  Glory,  is  giving  unto 
them  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  revelation  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  Him,  the  eyes  of  their  understanding  being 
enlightened."  I  see  all  that  in  the  group  around  the 
cross  on  Calvary ;  and  all  that  also  in  the  host  of  Chris- 
tian souls  who  have  been  filled  with  the  knowledge  of 
God,  through  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  in  all  the  ages 
since. 

I  should  be  more  glad  than  I  can  say  if  I  could  know 
that  I  had  opened  up  to  any  one  of  you  to-day  a  hope 
that  you  might  know  the  things  of  the  spiritual  life,  the 
things  of  God,  of  which  many  men  are  telling  you  now 
that  they  are  unknowable  by  man.  That  you  must  not 
believe.  So  long  as  man  is  able  to  do  right  Godward, 
to  keep  his  conscience  pure  and  true  and  reverent,  set 
upon  doing  the  best  things  on  the  highest  grounds,  he 
carries  with  him  an  eye  through  which  the  everlasting 
light  may,  and  assuredly  will,  shine  in  upon  his  soul. 
Such  faithfulness  and  consecration  and  hope  may  God 
give  to  all,  that  we  may  know  Him  more  and  more. 


VI. 

THE  MAN   OF  MACEDONIA. 

"And  a  vision  appeared  unto  Paul  in  the  night.  There  stood  a  man 
of  Macedonia,  and  prayed  him,  saying  :  Come  over  into  Macedonia 
and  help  us." — Acts  xvi.  9. 

It  was  the  moment  when  a  new  work  was  opening 
before  the  great  apostle  ;  nothing  less  than  the  carrying 
of  the  gospel  into  Europe.  He  had  passed  through 
Asia  and  was  sleeping  at  Troas,  with  the  Mediterranean 
waters  sounding  in  his  ears ;  and,  visible  across  them, 
the  islands  which  were  the  broken  fringes  of  another 
continent.  We  cannot  think  that  this  was  the  first 
time  that  it  had  come  into  Paul's  mind  to  think  of 
christianizing  Europe.  We  can  well  believe  that  on 
the  past  day  he  had  stood  and  looked  westward,  and 
thought  of  the  souls  of  men  as  hardly  any  man  since 
him  has  known  how  to  think  of  them,  and  longed  to 
win  for  his  Master  the  unknown  world  that  lay  beyond 
the  waters.  But  now,  in  his  sleep,  a  vision  comes,  and 
that  completes  whatever  preparation  may  have  been 
begun  before,  and  in  the  morning  he  is  ready  to  start. 

And  so  it  is  that  before  every  well-done  work  the 
vision  comes.  We  dream  before  we  accomplish.  We 
start  with  the  glorified  image  of  what  we  are  to  do  shin- 
ing before  our  eyes,  and  it  is  its  splendor  that  encour- 
ages and  entices  us  through  all  the  drudgery  of  the 
labor  that  we  meet.     The  captain  dreams  out  his  battle 


92  THE    MAN    OF   MACEDONIA. 

sleeping  in  his  tent.  The  quick  and  subtle-brained  in- 
ventor has  visions  of  his  new  wonder  of  machinery 
before  the  first  toothed  wheel  is  fitted  to  its  place.  You 
merchants  see  the  gxeat  enterprise  that  is  to  make  your 
fortune  break  out  of  vacancy  and  develop  all  its  richness 
to  you,  as  if  it  were  a  very  inspiration  from  above. 
Nay,  what  is  all  our  boyhood,  that  comes  before  our 
life,  and  thinks  and  pictures  to  itself  what  life  shall  be, 
that  fancies  and  resolves  and  is  impatient,  —  what  is  it 
but  just  the  vision  before  the  work,  the  dream  of 
Europe  coming  to  many  a  young  life,  as  it  sleeps  at 
Troas,  on  the  margin  of  the  sea  ?  The  visions  before  the 
work ;  it  is  their  strength  which  conquers  the  difficulties, 
and  lifts  men  up  out  of  the  failures,  and  redeems  the 
tawdriness  or  squaliduess  of  the  labor  that  succeeds. 

And  such  preparatory  visions,  the  best  of  them,  take 
the  form  and  tone  of  importunate  demands.  The  man 
hears  the  world  crying  out  for  just  this  thing  which  he 
is  going  to  start  to  do  to-morrow  morning.  This  battle 
is  to  save  the  cause.  This  new  invention  is  to  turn  the 
tide  of  wealth.  This  mighty  bargain  is  to  make  trade 
another  thing.  The  world  must  have  it.  And  the  long 
vision  of  boyhood  is  in  the  same  strain  too.  There  is 
something  in  him,  this  new  boy  says,  which  other  men 
have  never  had.  His  new  life  has  its  own  distinctive 
diff'erence.  He  will  fill  some  little  unfilled  necessary 
place.  He  will  toucli  some  little  untouched  spring. 
The  world  needs  him.  It  may  prove  afterwards  that 
the  vision  was  not  wholly  true.  It  may  seem  as  if, 
after  all,  only  another  duplicate  life  was  added  to  a  mil- 
lion others,  which  the  world  might  very  well  have  done 
without ;  but  still  the  power  of  the  vision  is  not  soon 


THE    MAN   OF   MACEDONIA.  93 

exhausted,  the  mortifying  confession  is  not  made  at 
once,  and  before  it  wholly  fades  away  the  vision  gives  a 
power  and  momentum  to  the  life  which  the  life  never 
wholly  loses. 

And  indeed  we  well  may  doubt  whether  the  vision 
was  a  false  one,  even  when  the  man  himself,  in  his 
colder  and  less  hopeful  years,  comes  to  think  and  say 
that  it  was.  We  well  may  doubt  whether,  with  the  in- 
finite difference  of  personal  life  and  character  which 
God  sends  into  the  world,  every  true  and  earnest  man 
has  not  some  work  that  he  alone  can  do,  some  place 
that  he  alone  can  fill ;  whether  there  is  not  somewhere 
a  demand  that  he  alone  can  satisfy ;  whether  the  world 
does  not  need  him,  is  not  calling  to  him,  "  Come  and 
help  us,"  as  he  used  to  hear  it  in  the  vision  that  was 
shown  to  him  upon  the  sea-shore. 

So  much  we  say  of  preparatory  visions  in  general.  I 
want  to  look  with  you  at  this  vision  of  Paul's,  and  see 
how  far  we  can  understand  its  meaning,  and  how  much 
we  can  learn  from  it.  A  Macedonian  comes  before  the 
apostle  of  Christ,  and  asks  him  for  the  gospel.  The 
messenger  is  the  representative,  not  of  Macedonia  only, 
but  of  all  Europe.  Macedonia  is  only  the  nearest  coun- 
try into  which  the  traveller  from  Asia  must  cross  first. 
There  he  stands  in  his  strange  dress,  with  his  strange 
western  look,  with  his  strange  gestures,  before  the  wak- 
ing or  the  sleeping  Paul,  begging  in  a  strange  language, 
which  only  the  pentecostal  power  6f  spiritual  appreci- 
ative sympathy  can  understand,  —  "  Come  over  and  help 
us."  But  what  was  this  Macedonia  and  this  Europe 
which  he  represented  ?  Did  it  want  the  gospel  ?  Had 
it  sent  him  out  because  it  was  restless  and  craving  and 


94  THE   MAN   OF   MACEDONIA. 

uneasy,  and  could  not  be  satisfied  until  it  heard  the 
truth  about  Jesus  Christ,  which  Paul  of  Tarsus  had  to 
tell  ?  Nothing  of  that  kind  whatsoever.  Europe  was 
going  on  perfectly  contented  in  its  heathenism.  Its 
milUons  knew  of  nothing  that  was  wanting  to  their  hap- 
piness. They  were  full  of  their  business  and  their 
pleasures,  scheming  for  little  self-advancements,  taking 
care  of  their  families,  living  in  their  tastes  or  their  pas- 
sions ;  a  few  questioning  with  themselves  deep  problems 
of  perplexed  philosophy,  a  few  hanging  votive  wreaths 
on  the  cold  altars  of  marble  gods  and  goddesses,  some 
looking  upward  and  some  downward  and  some  inward 
for  their  life;  but  none  looking  eastward  to  where  the 
apostle  was  sleeping,  or,  farther  east,  beyond  him,  to 
where  the  new  sun  of  the  new  religion  was  mailing  the 
dark  sky  bright  with  promise  on  that  silent  night.  So 
far  as  we  can  know  there  was  not  one  man  in  Mace- 
donia who  wanted  Paul.  When  he  went  over  there  the 
next  day,  he  found  what  ?  —  a  few  bigoted  Jews,  some 
crazy  soothsayers  and  witches,  multitudes  of  indifferent 
heathen,  a  few  open-hearted  men  and  women  who  heard 
and  believed  what  he  had  to  tell  them,  but  not  one  who 
had  believed  before,  or  wanted  to  believe,  —  not  one 
who  met  him  at  the  ship  and  said,  "  Come,  we  have 
waited  for  you ;  we  sent  for  you  ;  we  want  your  help." 
But  what  then  means  the  man  from  Macedonia  ?  If  he 
was  not  the  messenger  of  the  Macedonians,  who  was  he? 
Who  sent  him  ?  Ah  !  there  is  just  the  key  to  it.  God 
sent  him.  Not  the  Macedonians  themselves.  They  did 
not  want  the  gospel.  God  sent  him,  because  He  saw 
that  they  needed  the  gospel.  The  mysterious  man  was 
an  utterance  not  of  the  conscious  want  but  of  the  un- 


THE    MAN   OF    MACEDONIA.  95 

conscious  need  of  those  poor  people.  A  heart  and  being 
of  them,  deeper  and  more  essential  than  they  knew 
themselves,  took  shape  in  some  strange  method  by  the 
power  of  God,  and  came  and  stood  before  the  sleeping 
minister  and  said,  "  Come  over  and  help  us."  The 
"  man  of  Macedonia "  was  the  very  heart  and  essence 
of  Macedonia,  the  profoundest  capacities  of  truth  and 
goodness  and  faith  and  salvation  which  Macedonia 
itself  knew  nothing  of,  but  which  were  its  real  self. 
These  were  what  took  form  and  pleaded  for  satisfaction. 
It  is  not  easy  to  state  it ;  but  look  at  Europe  as  it  has 
been  since,  see  the  new  life  which  has  come  forth,  the 
profound  spirituality,  the  earnest  faith,  the  thoughtful 
devotion,  the  active  unselfishness  which  has  been  the 
Europe  of  succeeding  days ;  and  then  we  may  say  that 
this,  and  more  than  this,  all  that  is  yet  to  come,  was 
what  God  saw  lying  hidden  and  hampered,  and  set  free 
to  go  and  beg  for  help  and  release,  from  the  disciple 
who  held  the  key  which  has  unlocked  the  fetters. 

And  is  not  this  a  very  noble  and  a  very  true  idea  ? 
It  is  the  unsatisfied  soul,  the  deep  need,  all  the  more 
needy  because  the  outside  life,  perfectly  satisfied  with 
itself,  does  not  know  that  it  is  needy  all  the  time,  —  it  is 
this  that  God  hears  pleading.  This  soul  is  the  true 
Macedonia.  And  so  this,  as  the  representative  Mace- 
donian, the  man  of  Macedonia,  brings  the  appeal.  How 
noble  and  touching  is  the  picture  which  this  gives  us  of 
God.  The  unconscious  needs  of  the  world  are  all  ap- 
peals and  cries  to  Him.  He  does  not  wait  to  hear  the 
voice  of  conscious  want.  The  mere  vacancy  is  a  beg- 
ging after  fulness  ;  the  mere  poverty  is  a  supplication 
for  wealth ;  the  mere  darkness  cries  for  light.     Think 


96  THE   MAN    OF  MACEDONIA. 

then  a  moment  of  God's  infinite  view  of  the  capacities 
of  His  universe,  and  consider  what  a  great  cry  must  be 
forever  going  up  into  His  ears  to  which  His  soul  longs 
and  endeavors  to  respond.  Wherever  any  man  is 
capable  of  being  better  or  wiser  or  purer  than  he  is, 
God  hears  the  soul  of  that  man  crying  out  after  the 
purity  and  wisdom  and  goodness  which  is  its  right,  and 
of  which  it  is  being  defrauded  by  the  angry  passions  or 
the  stubborn  will.  When  you  shut  out  any  light  or 
truth  from  your  inner  self,  by  the  shutters  of  avarice 
or  indolence  which  your  outer,  superficial,  worldly  self 
so  easily  slips  up,  —  that  inner  self,  robbed,  starved, 
darkened,  not  conscious  of  its  want,  hidden  away  there 
under  the  hard  surface  of  your  worldliness,  has  yet  a 
voice  which  God  can  hear,  accusing  before  Him  your 
own  cruelty  to  yourself.  What  a  strong  piteous  wail  of 
dissatisfaction  must  He  hear  from  this  world  which 
seems  so  satisfied  with  itself.  Wherever  a  nation  is 
sunk  in  slavery  or  barbarism  it  cannot  be  so  perfectly 
contented  with  its  chains  but  that  He  hears  the  soul  of 
it  crying  out  after  liberty  and  civilization.  Wherever  a 
man  or  a  body  of  men  is  given  to  bigotry  and  prejudice, 
the  love  of  darkness  cannot  be  so  complete  but  that  He 
hears  the  human  heart  begging  for  the  light  that  it  was 
made  for.  Wherever  lust  is  ruling,  He  hears  the  appeal 
of  a  hidden,  outraged  purity  somewhere  under  the  foul 
outside,  and  sends  to  it  His  help.  Alas  for  us  if  God 
helped  us  only  when  we  knew  we  needed  Him  and  went 
to  Him  with  full  self-conscious  wants  !  Alas  for  us  if 
every  need  which  we  know  not,  had  not  a  voice  for 
Him  and  did  not  call  Him  to  us  !  Did  the  world  want 
the  Savior  ?     Was  it  not  into  a  blindness  so  dark  that 


THE    MAN    OF    MACEDONIA.  97 

it  did  not  know  that  it  was  blind,  into  a  wickedness  so 
wicked  that  it  was  not  looking  for  a  Savior,  that  the 
Savior  came  ?  And  when  we  look  back  can  we  say  that 
we  wanted  the  Lord  who  has  taken  us  into  His  service 
and  made  us  His  children  ?  Tell  me,  O  Christian,  was 
it  a  conscious  want,  —  was  it  not  the  cry  of  a  silent 
need,  that  brought  the  Master  to  your  side  at  first  and 
so  drew  you  to  His  ?  "  He  first  loved  us  !  "  Our  hope  is 
in  the  ear  which  God  has  for  simple  need ;  so  that  mere 
emptiness  cries  out  to  Him  for  filling,  mere  poverty  for 
wealth. 

I  cannot  help  turning  aside  a  moment  here  just  to 
bid  you  think  what  the  world  would  be  if  men  were 
like  God  in  this  respect.  Suppose  that  we,  all  of  us, 
heard  every  kind  of  need  crying  to  us  with  an  appeal 
which  we  could  not  resist.  Out  of  every  suffering  and 
constraint  and  wrong,  suppose  there  came  to  us,  as  out 
of  Macedonia  there  came  to  Paul,  a  ghost,  a  vision,  pre- 
senting at  once  to  us  the  fact  of  need  and  the  possibility 
of  what  the  needy  man  might  be  if  the  need  were  satis- 
fied and  the  chain  broken.  Suppose  such  visions  came 
and  stood  around  us  crying  out  "Help  us."  You  go 
through  some  wretched  street  and  not  a  beggar  touches 
your  robe  or  looks  up  in  your  face,  but  the  bare,  dread- 
ful presence  of  poverty  cries  out  of  every  tumbling 
shanty  and  every  ragged  pretence  of  dress.  You  go 
among  the  ignorant,  and  out  from  under  their  contented 
ignorance  their  hidden  power  of  knowledge  utters  itself 
and  says  "  0  teach  us."  It  is  not  enough  for  you  that 
the  oppressed  are  satisfied  with  their  oppression.  That 
only  makes  you  the  more  eager  to  feed  into  conscious- 
ness and  strength  that  hunger  after  liberty  which  they 


98  THE  MAN    OF   MACEDONIA. 

are  too  degraded  to  feel.  You  see  a  sick  man  contented 
with  dogged  acquiescence  and  submission,  and  you 
want  to  show  him  the  possibility  and  to  lead  him  to 
the  realization,  of  a  resignation  and  delight  in  suf- 
fering which  he  never  dreams  of  now.  Mere  pain  is 
itself  a  cry  for  sympathy  ;  mere  darkness  an  appeal  for 
light 

"  Ah,"  do  you  say,  "  that  must  be  a  most  uncomfort- 
able way  of  living.  The  world  forever  clamoring  for 
help  !  Those  things  are  not  my  mission,  not  my  work. 
If  the  world  does  not  know  its  needs  I  will  not  tell 
it.  Let  it  rest  content.  That  is  best  for  it "  ?  But 
there  have  been,  and,  thank  God,  there  are,  men  of  a 
better  stuff  than  you  ;  men  who  cannot  know  of  a  need 
in  all  the  world,  from  the  need  of  a  child  fallen  in  the 
street,  whose  tears  are  to  be  wiped  away,  to  the  need 
of  a  nation  lying  in  sin,  whose  wickedness  must  be 
rebuked  to  its  face  at  the  cost  of  the  rebuker's  life  ; 
there  are  men  who  cannot  know  of  a  need  in  all  the 
world  without  its  taking  the  shape  of  a  personal  appeal 
to  them.  They  must  go  and  do  this  thing.  There  are 
such  men  who  seem  to  have  a  sort  of  magnetic  attmc- 
tion  for  all  wrongs  and  pains.  All  grievances  and  woes 
fly  to  them  to  be  righted  and  consoled.  They  at- 
tract need.  They  who  cannot  sleep  at  Troas  but  the 
soul  of  Macedonia  finds  them  out  and  comes  across  and 
begs  them  "  Come  and  help  us."  We  all  must  be 
thankful  to  know  that  tliere  are  such  men  among  us, 
however  little  we  may  feel  that  we  are  such  men  our- 
selves ;  nay,  however  little  we  may  want  to  be  such 
men. 


THE  MAN    OF   MACEDONIA.  99 

But  let  US  come  a  little  nearer  to  the  truth  that  we 
are  studying.  It  seems  to  me  that  all  which  we  have 
said  about  the  man  of  Macedonia  includes  the  real  state 
of  the  case  with  reference  to  the  essential  need  of  the 
human  soul  for  the  Gospel.  We  often  hear  of  the 
great  cry  of  human  nature  for  the  truth  of  Christ,  man 
craving  the  Savior.  What  does  it  mean  ?  The  world 
moves  on  and  every  face  looks  satisfied.  Eating  and 
drinking  and  working  and  studying,  loving  and  hating, 
struggling  and  enjoying,  —  those  things  seem  to  be  suffi- 
cient for  men's  wants.  There  is  no  discontent  that 
men  will  tell  you  of.  They  are  not  conscious  of  a  need. 
I  stop  you,  the  most  careless  hearer  in  the  church 
to-night,  as  you  go  out,  and  say  "  Are  you  satisfied  ? " 
and  honestly  you  answer  "  Yes  !  My  business  and  my 
family,  they  are  enough  for  me  "  ;  "  Do  you  feel  any 
need  of  Christ  ? "  and  honestly  you  answer  "  No  !  Some- 
times I  fear  that  it  will  go  ill  with  me  by  and  by,  if  I  do 
not  seek  Him,  but  at  present  I  do  not  want  Him  ;  I  do 
not  see  how  I  should  be  happier  if  I  had  Him  here." 
That  is  about  the  honest  answer  which  your  heart 
would  make.  But  what  then  ?  Just  as  below  the 
actual  Macedonia  which  did  not  care  for  Paul  nor  want 
him,  there  was  another  possible,  ideal  Macedonia  which 
God  saw  and  called  forth  and  sent  in  a  visionary  form 
to  beg  the  help  it  could  not  do  without,  so  to  that  civil 
flippant  answerer  of  my  question  at  the  church  door  I 
could  say :  "  Below  this  outer  self  of  yours  which  is 
satisfied  with  family  and  business,  there  is  another  self 
which  you  know  nothing  of  but  which  God  sees,  which 
He  values  as  your  truest  and  deepest  self,  which  to  His 
sight  is  a  real  person  pleading  so  piteously  for  help  that 


100  THE   MAN   OF   MACEDONIA. 

He  has  not  been  able  to  resist  its  pleading,  but  has  sent 
His  ministers,  has  sent  His  Bible,  —  nay,  has  come  Him- 
self to  satisfy  it  with  that  spiritual  aid  it  cannot  do 
without."  I  can  imagine  a  look  of  perplexity  and  won- 
der, a  turning  back,  an  inward  search  for  this  inner  self, 
a  stranore,  bewildered  doubt  whether  it  exists  at  all. 

And  yet,  this  coming  forth  of  inner  selves  with  their 
demands,  is  it  not  the  one  method  of  all  progress  ? 
What  does  it  mean  when  a  slave,  long  satisfied  with 
being  fed  and  housed  and  clothed,  some  day  comes  to 
the  knowledge  that  he  was  meant  to  be  free,  and  can 
rest  satisfied  as  a  slave  no  longer  ?  What  is  it  when 
the  savage's  inner  nature  is  touched  by  the  ambition  of 
knowledge,  and  he  cannot  rest  until  he  grows  to  be  a 
scholar  ?  What  is  it  when  a  hard,  selfish  man's  crust 
is  broken,  and  a  sensitive,  tender  soul  uncovered,  which 
makes  life  a  wretched  thing  to  him  from  that  moment, 
unless  he  has  somebody  besides  himself  to  love  and 
help  and  cherish  ?  These  men  would  not  believe  an 
liour  before  that  such  appetites  and  faculties  were  in 
them  ;  but  God  knew  them,  and  heard  them  all  the  time  ; 
and  long  before  the  men  dreamed  of  it  themselves, 
the  slave  was  crying  out  to  Him  for  freedom,  and  the 
savage  for  culture,  and  the  tyrant  for  love.  Xow  is  it 
strange  that,  also  unknown  to  you,  there  should  be  other 
appetites  and  faculties  in  you  which  need  a  satisfaction  ? 
The  Bible  says  there  are.  Experience  says  there  are. 
Let  us  see  if  we  can  find  some  of  them. 

1.  The  first  need  is  a  God  to  lo\-e  and  worship.  Any- 
body who  looks  wisely  back  into  history  sees,  I  think, 
regarding  man's  need  of  a  God  to  love  and  worship,  just 
what  I  have  stated  to  be  true.     Not  that   man  was 


THE   MAN   OF  MACEDONIA.  101 

always  seeking  God,  or  always  miserable,  when  he  did 
not  find  Him.  One  sees  multitudes  of  men,  and  some- 
times whole  periods,  or  whole  countries,  that  seem  to 
have  no  sense  of  want  whatever,  to  have  settled  down 
into  the  purest  materialism  and  the  most  utter  self- 
content.  But  he  sees  also  indications  everywhere  that 
the  need  was  present,  even  where  the  want  was  not  felt. 
He  sees  the  idea  of  God  keeping  a  sort  of  persistent  foot- 
hold in  the  human  heart,  which  proves  to  him  that  it 
belongs  there ;  that,  whether  the  heart  wants  it  or  not, 
it  and  the  heart  are  mates,  made  for  one  another,  and 
so  tending  towards  each  other  by  a  certain  essential 
gravitation,  whatever  accidental  causes  may  have  tried 
to  produce  an  estrangement  between  them.  Take  one 
juch  indication  only,  a  very  striking  one,  I  think. 
There  is  in  man  a  certain  power  of  veneration,  of  awe, 
of  adoration.  This  has  always  showed  itself.  In  all 
sorts  of  men,  in  all  sorts  of  places,  it  has  broken  out ;  and 
men  have  tried  to  adapt  it  to  all  sorts  of  objects,  to 
satisfy  it  with  all  sorts  of  food.  The  idolater  has  offered 
to  his  facility  of  reverence  his  wooden  idol,  and  said 
"  There,  worship  that ; "  the  philosopher  has  offered  it 
his  abstract  truth,  and  said  "Venerate  that;"  the  phil- 
anthropist has  offered  it  his  ideal  humanity,  and  said 
"  Worship  that ; "  and  one  result  has  always  followed. 
Everywhere  where  nothing  higher  than  the  idol,  the 
theory,  or  the  humanity  was  offered  for  the  reverence 
to  fasten  on,  everywhere  where  it  was  offered  no 
one  supreme  causal  God,  not  merely  the  object  of  rever- 
ence has  ceased  to  be  reverenced,  but  the  very  power 
of  reverence  itself  has  been  dissipated  and  lost;  and 
idolatry,  philosophy,   philanthropy   alike    have    grown 


102  THE   MAN   OF   MACEDONIA. 

irreverent,  and  man  has  lost  and  often  come  to  despise 
that  faculty  of  venerating  and  submissive  awe,  the  awe 
of  love,  for  which  he  found  no  use.  If  this  be  true, 
that  there  is  a  faculty  in  man  which  dies  out  on  any 
other  food,  and  thrives  only  on  the  personal  Deity,  then 
have  we  not  exactly  what  I  tried  to  describe,  a  need  of 
which  one  may  be  utterly  unconscious,  and  yet  which 
is  no  less  a  need,  crying,  though  the  man  does  not  hear 
it,  for  supply  ? 

This  is  precisely  the  ground  which  I  would  take  with 
any  thoughtful  man  who  told  me  seriously  and  without 
flippancy  that  he  felt  no  want  of  God,  that  he  felt  no 
lack  in  the  absence  of  relations  between  his  life  and 
that  of  a  supreme  infinite  Father.  "  Yes,"  I  would  say, 
"  but  there  is  in  you  a  power  of  loving  awe  which  needs 
infinite  perfection  and  mercy  to  call  it  out  and  satisfy 
it.  There  is  an  affection  which  you  cannot  exercise 
towards  any  imperfect  being.  It  is  that  mixture  of  ad- 
miration and  reverence  and  fear  and  love,  which  we 
call  worship.  Now  ask  yourself.  Are  you  not  losing  the 
power  of  worship  ?  Is  it  not  dying  for  want  of  an  ob- 
ject ?  Are  you  not  conscious  that  a  power  of  the  soul, 
which  other  men  use,  which  you  used  once  perhaps,  is 
going  from  you  ?  Are  you  not  substituting  critical, 
carefully  limited,  philosophical,  partial  appr'-'bations  of 
imperfect  men  and  things,  for  that  absolute,  unhindered, 
whole-souled  outpouring  of  worship  which  nothing  but 
the  perfect  can  demand  or  justify  ?  If  this  power  is  not 
utterly  to  die  within  you,  do  you  not  need  God  ?  If 
you  are  not  to  lose  that  highest  reach  of  love  and  fear 
where,  uniting,  they  make  worship,  must  you  not  have 
God  ?     Lo  !   before  this  expiring  faculty  the  personal 


THE   MAN    OF    MACEDONIA.  103 

God  comes  and  stands,  and  it  lifts  up  its  dying  hands 
to  reach  after  Him  ;  it  opens  its  dying  eyes  to  look  upon 
Him  ;  as  when  a  man  is  perishing  of  starvation,  the  sight 
of  bread  summons  him  back  to  life.  He  need  not  die, 
but  live,  for  here  is  his  own  life-food  come  to  him." 

Woe  to  the  man  who  loses  the  faculty  of  worship, 
the  faculty  of  honoring  and  loving  and  fearing  not 
merely  something  better  than  himself,  but  something 
which  is  the  absolute  best,  the  perfect  good,  —  his  God ! 
The  life  is  gone  out  of  his  life  when  this  is  gone.  There 
is  a  cloud  upon  his  thought,  a  palsy  on  his  action,  a  chill 
upon  his  love.  Because  you  must  worship,  therefore 
you  must  have  God. 

2.  But  more  than  this.  Every  man  needs  not  merely 
a  God  to  worship,  but  also,  taking  the  fact  which 
meets  us  everywhere  of  an  estrangement  by  sin  between 
mankind  and  God,  every  man  needs  some  power  to 
turn  him  and  bring  him  back  ;  some  reconciliation,  some 
Reconciler,  some  Savior  for  his  soul.  Again  I  say  he 
may  not  know  his  need,  but  none  the  less  the  need  is 
there.  But,  if  a  man  has  reached  the  first  want  and 
really  is  desiring  God,  then  I  think  he  generally  does 
know,  or  in  some  vague  way  suspect,  this  second  want, 
and  does  desire  reconciliation.  It  is  so  natural !  Two  of 
you,  who  have  been  friends,  have  quarrelled.  Your  very 
quarrel,  it  may  be,  has  brought  out  to  each  of  you  how 
much  you  need  each  other.  You  never  knew  your  friend 
was  so  necessary  to  your  comfort  and  your  happiness. 
You  cannot  do  without  him.  Then  at  once, "  How  shall 
I  get  to  him  ?  "  becomes  your  question.  O  the  awkward- 
ness and  difficulty,  the  stumbling  and  shuffling  and 
blundering  of  such  efforts  at  return.     Men  are  afraid 


104  THE   MAN   OF    MACEDONIA. 

and  ashamed  to  try.  They  do  not  know  how  they  will 
be  received.  They  cannot  give  up  their  old  pride. 
Eebellious  tempers  and  bad  habits  block  the  way.  I 
doubt  not,  so  frequent  are  they,  that  there  are  people 
here  to-night  who  are  stumbling  about  in  some  such 
bog  of  unsettled  quarrel,  longing  to  get  back  to  some 
friend  whom  they  value  more  in  their  disagreement 
than  even  in  the  old  days  of  unbroken  peace.  Their 
whole  soul  is  hungering  for  reconciliation.  The  miseiy 
of  their  separation  is  that  each  at  heart  desires  what 
neither  has  the  frankness  and  the  courage  to  attain. 

Now  under  all  outward  rebellion  and  wickedness, 
there  is  in  every  man  who  ought  to  be  a  friend  of  God, 
and  that  means  every  man  whom  God  has  made,  a 
need  of  reconciliation.  To  get  back  to  God,  that  is 
the  struggle.  The  soul  is  Godlike  and  seeks  its  own. 
It  wants  its  Father.  There  is  an  orphanage,  a  home- 
sickness of  the  heart  which  has  gone  up  into  the  ear  of 
God,  and  called  the  Savior,  the  Eeconciler,  to  meet  it  by 
His  wondrous  life  and  death.  I,  for  my  part,  love  to 
see  in  every  restlessness  of  man's  moral  life  everywhere, 
whatever  forms  it  takes,  the  struggles  of  this  imprisoned 
desire.  The  reason  may  be  rebellious,  and  vehemently 
cast  aside  the  whole  story  of  the  New  Testament,  but 
the  soul  is  never  wholly  at  its  rest  away  from  God. 
Does  this  not  put  it  most  impressively  before  us  ?  Is 
it  not  something  at  least  to  startle  us  and  make  us 
think,  if  we  come  to  know  that  the  very  God  of  heaven 
saw  a  want,  a  strus"le,  a  lonoing  of  our  souls  after 
Himself,  which  was  too  deep,  too  obscure,  too  clouded 
over  with  other  interests  for  even  us  to  see  ourselves, 
and  came  to  meet  that  want  with  the  wonderful  mani- 


THE   MA.N    OF   MACEDONIA.  105 

festation  of  the  incarnation,  the  atonement  ?  We  hear 
of  the  marvellous  power  of  the  Gospel,  and  we  come  to 
doubt  it  when  we  see  the  multitudes  of  unsaved  men. 
But  it  is  true.  The  Gospel  is  powerful,  omnipotent.  A 
truth  like  this,  thoroughly  believed,  and  taken  in,  must 
melt  the  hardest  heart  and  break  down  the  most  stub- 
born will.  It  does  not  save  men,  simply  because  it  is 
not  taken  in,  not  believed.  The  Gospel  is  powerless, 
just  as  the  medicine  that  you  keep  corked  in  its  vial  on 
the  shelf  is  powerless.  If  you  will  not  take  it,  what 
matters  it  what  marvellous  drugs  have  lent  their  subtle 
virtues  to  it  ?  Believe  and  thou  art  saved. .  Understand 
and  know,  and  thoroughly  take  home  into  your  affec- 
tion and  your  will,  the  certain  truth  that  Christ  saw 
your  need  of  Him  when  you  did  not  know  it  yourself, 
and  came  to  help  you  at  a  cost  past  all  calculation,  — 
really  believe  this  and  you  must  be  a  new  man  and  be 
saved. 

3.  I  should  like  to  point  out  another  of  the  needs 
of  man  which  God  has  heard  appealing  to  Him  and  has 
satisfied  completely.  I  know  that  I  must  speak  about  it 
very  briefly.  It  is  the  need  of  spiritual  guidance  ;  and  it 
is  a  need  whose  utterance  not  God's  ear  alone  can  hear. 
Every  man  hears  it  in  the  race  at  large,  and  hears  it 
in  his  brethren,  however  deaf  he  may  be  to  it  in  himself. 
I  think  there  never  was  a  materialist  so  complete  that 
he  did  not  realize  that  the  great  mass  of  men  were  not 
materialists,  but  believed  in  spiritual  forces  and  longed 
for  spiritual  companies.  He  might  think  the  spiritual 
tendency  the  wildest  of  delusions,  but  he  could  not 
doubt  its  prevalence.  How  could  he  ?  Here  is  the 
whole  earth  full  of  it.     Language  is  all  shaped  upon  it. 


106  THE   MAN    OF   MACEDONIA. 

Thought  is  all  saturated  with  it.  In  the  most  imposing 
and  the  most  vulgar  methods,  by  solemn  oracles  and 
rocking  tables,  men  have  been  always  trying  to  put 
themselves  into  communication  with  the  spiritual  world 
and  to  get  counsel  and  help  from  within  the  vail.  And 
if  we  hear  the  cry  from  one  another,  how  much  more 
God  hears  it.  Do  you  think,  poor  stumbler,  that  God 
did  not  know  it  when  you  found  no  man  to  tell  you 
what  you  ought  to  do  in  a  perplexity  which,  as  it  rose 
around  you,  seemed,  as  it  was,  unlike  any  bewilderment 
that  had  ever  puzzled  any  man  before  ?  Do  you  think, 
poor  sufferer,  that  God  did  not  hear  it  when  in  your 
sickness  and  pain  men  came  about  you  with  their  kind- 
ness, fed  you  with  delicacies,  and  spread  soft  cushions 
under  the  tortured  body,  and  all  the  time  the  mind  dis- 
eased, feeling  so  bitterly  that  these  tender  cares  for  the 
body's  comfort  did  not  begin  to  touch  its  spiritual  pain, 
lay  moaning  and  wailing  out  its  hopeless  woe  ?  Do 
you  think  now,  my  brother,  when  you  have  got  a  hard 
duty  to  do,  a  hard  temptation  to  resist ;  when  you  have 
felt  all  about  you  for  strength,  called  in  prudence  and 
custom  and  respectability  and  interest  to  keep  you 
straight,  and  found  them  all  fail  because,  by  their  very 
nature,  they  have  no  spiritual  strength  to  give ;  when 
now  you  stand  just  ready  to  give  way  and  fall,  ready  to 
go  to-morrow  morning  and  do  the  wrong  thing  that  you 
have  struggled  against  so  long,  —  do  you  think  that  God 
does  not  know  it  all,  and  does  not  hear  the  poor  fright- 
ened soul's  cry  for  help  against  the  outrage  that  is 
threatening  her,  and  has  not  prepared  a  way  of  aid  ? 
The  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit !  —  an  everlasting  spiritual 
presence  among  men.     What  but  that  is  the  thing  we 


THE   MAN    OF   MACEDONIA.  107 

want  ?  That  is  what  the  old  oracles  were  dreaming  of, 
what  the  modern  spiritualists  to-night  are  fumbling 
after.  The  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  by  which  every 
man  who  is  in  doubt  may  know  what  is  right,  every 
man  whose  soul  is  sick  may  be  made  spiritually  whole, 
every  weak  man  may  be  made  a  strong  man,  —  that 
is  God's  one  sufficient  answer  to  the  endless  appeal  of 
man's  spiritual  life ;  that  is  God's  one  great  response 
to  the  unconscious  need  of  spiritual  guidance,  which  he 
hears  crying  out  of  the  deep  heart  of  every  man. 

I  hope  that  I  have  made  clear  to  you  what  I  mean. 
I  would  that  we  might  understand  ourselves,  see  what  we 
might  be ;  nay,  see  what  we  are.  While  you  are  living 
a  worldly  and  a  wicked  life,  letting  all  sacred  things  go, 
caring  for  no  duty,  serving  no  God,  there  is  another 
self,  your  possibility,  the  thing  that  you  might  be, 
the  thing  that  God  gave  you  a  chance  to  be ;  and  that 
self,  wronged  and  trampled  on  by  your  recklessness, 
escapes  and  flies  to  God  with  its  appeal :  —  "  O,  come 
and  help  me.  I  am  dying.  I  am  dying.  Give  me^ 
Thyself  for  Father.  Give  me  Thy  Son  for  Savior. ' 
Give  me  Thy  Spirit  for  my  guide."  So  your  soul  pleads 
before  God  ;  pleads  with  a  pathos  all  the  more  piteous 
in  his  ears,  because  you  do  not  hear  the  plea  yourself ; 
pleads  with  such  sacred  prevalence  that  the  great 
merciful  Heart  yields  and  gives  aU  that  the  dumb  appeal 
has  asked. 

What  does  it  mean  ?  Here  is  the  Gospel  in  its  ful- 
ness. Here  is  God  for  you  to  worship.  Here  is  Christ 
to  save  you.  Here  is  the  Comforter.  Have  you  asked 
for  them,  my  poor  careless  brother,  that  here  they  stand 


108  THE    MAN    OF    MACEDONIA. 

with  such  profusion  of  blessing,  waiting  to  help  you  ? 
"  Ah,  no,"  you  say,  "  I  never  asked."  Suppose,  when 
Paul  landed  in  Macedonia,  he  had  turned  to  the  careless 
group  who  watched  him  as  he  stepped  ashore,  and  said, 
"  Here  am  I ;  you  sent  for  me.  Here  am  I  with  the 
truth,  the  Christ  you  need,"  —  what  must  their  answer 
have  been  ?  "  0,  no,  you  are  mistaken ;  we  never  sent ; 
we  do  not  know  you ;  w^e  do  not  want  you ! "  Yet 
they  had  sent.  Their  needs  had  stood  and  begged  him 
to  come  over,  out  of  the  lips  of  that  mysterious  man  of 
Macedonia.  And  when  they  came  to  know  this,  they 
must  have  found  all  the  more  precious  the  preciousness 
of  a  gospel  which  had  come  to  them  in  answer  to  a  need 
they  did  not  know  themselves. 

And  so  your  needs  have  stood,  they  are  standing  now 
before  God.  They  have  moved  Him  to  deep  pity  and 
care  for  you.  And  He  has  sent  the  supply  for  them  be- 
,  fore  you  knew  you  wanted  it.  And  here  it  is,  —  a  God 
to  worship,  a  Savior  to  believe  in,  a  Comforter  to  rest 
upon.  0,  if  you  ever  do  come,  as  I  would  to  God  that 
you  might  come  to-night,  to  take  this  mercy,  and  let 
your  thirsty  soul  drink  of  this  water  of  life !  then  you 
will  feel  most  deeply  the  goodness  which  provided  for 
you  before  you  even  knew  that  you  needed  any  such 
provision ;  then  you  will  understand  those  words  of 
Paul :  "  God  commendeth  His  love  toward  us,  in  that 
while  we  were  yet  sinners  Christ  died  for  us." 

Till  that  time  comes,  what  can  God  do  but  stand  and 
call  you  and  warn  you  and  beg  you  to  know  yourself 
"Because  thou  sayest,  I  am  rich  and  increased  with 
goods,  and  have  need  of  nothing,  and  knowest  not  that 
thou  art  wretched  and  miserable  and  poor  and  blind 


THE   MAN    OF   MACEDONIA.  109 

and  naked,  I  counsel  thee  to  buy  of  Me  gold  tried  in 
the  fire,  that  thou  mayest  be  rich.  Behold,  I  stand  at 
the  door  and  knock.  If  any  man  hear  My  voice,  and 
open  the  door,  I  will  come  in  and  sup  with  him,  and  he 
with  Me." 


VII. 

THE  SYMMETRY  OF  LIFE. 

"The  Length  and  the  Breadth  and  the  Height  of  it  are  equal."  — 
Rev.  xxi.  16. 

St.  John  in  his  great  vision  sees  the  mystic  city, 
"  the  holy  Jerusalem,"  descending  out  of  heaven  from 
God.  It  is  the  picture  of  glorified  humanity,  of  human- 
ity as  it  shall  be  when  it  is  brought  to  its  completeness 
by  being  thoroughly  filled  with  God.  And  one  of  the 
glories  of  the  city  which  he  saw  was  its  symmetry. 
Our  cities,  our  developments  and  presentations  of 
human  life,  are  partial  and  one-sided.  This  city  out  of 
heaven  was  symmetrical.  In  all  its  three  dimensions  it 
was  complete.  Neither  was  sacrificed  to  the  other. 
"  The  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  height  of  it  are 
equal." 

No  man  can  say  what  mysteries  of  the  yet  unopened 
future  are  hidden  in  the  picture  of  the  mystic  city ; 
but  if  that  city  represents,  as  I  have  said,  the  glorified 
humanity,  then  there  is  much  of  it  that  we  can  under- 
stand already.  It  declares  that  the  perfect  life  of  man 
will  be  perfect  on  every  side.  One  token  of  its  perfect- 
ness  will  be  its  symmetry.  In  each  of  its  three  dimen- 
sions it  will  be  complete. 

So  much  of  the  noblest  life  which  the  world  has  seen 
dissatisfies   us  with  its   partialness;    so   many  of  the 


THE  SYMMETRY   OF   LIFE.  Ill 

greatest  men  we  see  are  great  only  upon  certain  sides, 
and  have  their  other  sides  all  shrunken,  flat,  and  small, 
that  it  may  be  well  for  us  to  dwell  upon  the  picture, 
which  these  words  suggest,  of  a  humanity  rich  and  full 
and  strong  all  round,  complete  on  every  side,  the 
perfect  cube  of  human  life  which  comes  down  out  of 
heaven  from  God. 

As  I  speak  I  should  like  to  keep  before  my  mind 
and  before  yours,  that  picture  which  I  think  is  the 
most  interesting  that  the  world  has  to  show,  the  picture 
of  a  young  man,  brave  and  strong  and  generous,  just 
starting  out  into  life,  and  meaning  with  all  his  might  to 
be  the  very  best  and  most  perfect  man  he  can  ;  meaning 
to  make  life  the  fullest  and  most  genuine  success.  Let 
us  see  him  before  us  as  I  speak.  We  shall  see  how 
natural  his  dangers  and  temptations  are  ;  we  shall  see 
how  his  very  strength  tends  to  partialness  ;  we  shall  see 
how  every  power  that  is  in  him  will  grow  doubly  strong 
if  he  can  buttress  and  steady  it  with  strength  upon  the 
other  sides,  if  in  his  growing  character  he  can  attain  the 
symmetry  and  completeness  of  the  new  Jerusalem. 

There  are,  then,  three  directions  or  dimensions  of 
human  life  to  which  we  may  fitly  give  these  three 
names,  Length  and  Breadth  and  Height.  The  Length  of 
a  life,  in  this  meaning  of  it,  is,  of  course,  not  its  dura- 
tion. It  is  rather  the  reaching  on  and  out  of  a  man,  in 
the  line  of  activity  and  thought  and  self-development, 
which  is  indicated  and  prophesied  by  the  character 
which  is  natural  within  him,  by  the  special  ambi- 
tions which  spring  up  out  of  his  special  powers.  It  is 
the  push  of  a  life  forward  to  its  own  personal  ends  and 
ambitions.     The  Breadth  of  a  life,  on  the  other  hand,  is 


112  THE   SYMMETRY   OF   LIFE. 

its  outreach  laterally,  if  we  may  say  so.  It  is  the 
constantly  diffusive  tendency  which  is  always  drawing 
a  man  outward  into  sympathy  with  other  men.  And 
the  Height  of  a  life  is  its  reacli  upward  towards  God  ;  its 
sense  of  childhood  ;  its  consciousness  of  the  Divine  Life 
over  it  with  which  it  tries  to  live  in  love,  communion, 
and  obedience.  These  are  the  three  dimensions  of  a 
life,  —  its  length  and  breadth  and  height,  —  without  the 
due  development  of  all  of  which  no  life  becomes 
complete. 

Think  first  about  the  Length  of  life  in  this  understand- 
ing  of  the  word.  Here  is  a  man  who,  as  he  comes  to 
self-consciousness,  recognizes  in  himself  a  certain  nature. 
He  cannot  be  mistaken.  Other  men  have  their  special 
powers  and  dispositions.  As  this  young  man  studies 
himself  he  finds  that  he  has  his.  That  nature  which  he 
has  discovered  in  himself  decides  for  him  his  career. 
He  says  to  himself  "  Whatever  I  am  to  do  in  the  world 
must  be  done  in  this  direction."  It  is  a  fascinating 
discovery.  It  is  an  ever-memorable  time  for  a  man 
when  he  first  makes  it.  It  is  almost  as  if  a  star  woke 
to  some  subtle  knowledge  of  itself,  and  felt  within  its 
shining  frame  the  forces  which  decided  what  its  orbit 
was  to  be.  Because  it  is  the  star  it  is,  that  track 
through  space  must  be  its  track.  Out  on  that  track 
it  looks ;  along  that  line  which  sweeps  through  the 
great  host  of  stars  it  sends  out  all  its  hopes  ;  and 
all  the  rest  of  space  is  merely  the  field  through  which 
that  track  is  flung  ;  all  the  great  host  of  stars  is  but  the 
audience  which  wait  to  hear  it  as  it  goes  singing  on  its 
way.  So  starts  the  young  life  which  has  come  to  self- 
discovery  and  found  out  what  it  is  to  do  by  finding  out 


THE   SYMMETKY   OF  LIFE.  113 

what  it  is.  It  starts  to  do  that  destined  thing  ;  to  run 
out  that  appointed  course.  Nay,  the  man  when  he  arrives 
at  this  self-discovery  finds  that  his  nature  has  not  waited 
for  hira  to  recognize  himself.  What  he  is,  even  before 
he  knows  it,  has  decided  what  he  does.  It  may  be 
late  in  life  before  he  learns  to  say  of  himself  "  This  is 
what  I  am."  But  then  he  looks  back  and  discerns  that, 
even  without  his  knowing  himself  enough  to  have 
found  it  out,  his  life  has  run  out  in  a  line  which  had 
the  promise  and  potency  of  its  direction  in  the  nature 
which  his  birth  and  education  gave  him.  But  if  he 
does  know  it,  the  course  is  yet  more  definite  and  clear. 
Every  act  that  he  does  is  a  new  section  of  that  line 
which  runs  between  his  nature  and  his  appointed  work. 
Just  in  proportion  to  the  definiteness  with  which  he  has 
measured  and  understood  himself,  is  the  sharpness  of 
that  line  which  every  thought  and  act  and  word  is  pro- 
jecting a  little  farther,  through  the  host  of  human  lives, 
towards  the  purpose  of  his  living,  towards  the  thing 
which  he  believes  that  he  is  set  into  the  world  to  do. 

Your  own  experience  will  tell  you  what  I  mean. 
Have  you  known  any  young  man  who  early  found  out 
what  his  nature  was ;  found  out,  for  instance,  that  he 
had  a  legal  mind  and  character  ?  He  said  to  himself  "  I 
am  made  to  be  a  lawyer."  Instantly  with  that  dis- 
covery it  was  as  if  two  points  stood  out  clearly  to  him ; 
he  with  his  legal  nature  here  ;  the  full,  completed  law- 
yer's work  and  fame  afar  off  there.  Two  unconnected 
points  they  seemed  at  first,  which  simply  beckoned  to 
each  other  across  the  great  distance,  and  knew  that, 
however  unconnected  they  might  be,  they  had  to  do 
with   one   another  and   must  ultimately   meet.     Then 


114  THE   SYMMETRY   OF  LIFE. 

that  man's  life  became  one  long  extension  of  his  nature 
and  his  powers  and  his  wiU  along  a  line  which  should 
at  last  attain  that  distant  goal.  All  his  self-culture 
strove  that  way.  He  read  no  book,  he  sought  no 
fiiend,  he  gave  himself  no  recreation,  which  was  not 
somehow  going  to  help  him  to  his  end  and  make  him  a 
better  lawyer.  Through  the  confusion  and  whirl  of 
human  lives,  his  life  ran  in  one  sharp,  narrow  line, 
almost  as  straight  and  clear  as  the  railroad  track  across 
a  continent,  from  what  he  knew  he  was,  to  what  he 
meant  to  be  and  do.  As  the  railroad  track  sweeps 
through  the  towns  which  string  themselvCvS  along  it, 
climbs  mountains  and  plunges  into  valleys,  hides  itself 
in  forests  and  flashes  out  again  into  broad  plains  and 
along  the  sunny  sides  of  happy  lakes,  and  evidently 
cares  nothing  for  them  all  except  as  they  just  give  it 
ground  on  which  to  roll  out  its  length  towards  its  end 
by  the  shore  of  the  Pacific,  —  so  this  man's  life  pierces 
right  on  through  all  the  tempting  and  perplexing  com- 
plications of  our  human  living,  and  will  not  rest  until 
it  has  attained  the  mastery  of  legal  power.  That  clear, 
straight  line  of  its  unswerving  intention,  that  struggle 
and  push  right  onward  to  the  end,  —  that  is  the  length 
of  this  man's  life. 

And  if  you  recognize  this,  as  of  course  you  do,  then 
you  know  also  how  necessary  an  element  or  dimension 
of  any  useful  and  successful  life  this  is.  To  have  an 
end  and  seek  it  eagerly,  no  man  does  anything  in  the 
world  without  that.  If  we  let  our  thoughts  leap  at  once 
to  the  summit  of  human  living,  and  think  of  Jesus,  we 
see  it  in  perfection.  The  onward  reach,  the  struggle  to 
an  apprehended  purpose,  the  straight  clear  line  right 


THE   SYMMETRY  OF  LIFE.  115 

from  His  own  self-knowledge  to  His  work,  was  perfect 
in  the  Lord.  "  For  this  cause  was  I  born,"  He  cried. 
His  life  pierced  like  an  arrow  through  the  cloud  of  aim- 
less lives,  never  for  a  moment  losing  its  direction, 
hurrying  on  with  a  haste  and  assurance  which  were 
divine.  And  this  which  He  illustrates  perfectly  is,  in 
our  own  fashion,  one  of  the  favorite  thoughts  of  our  own 
time.  No  man  finds  less  tolerance  to-day  than  the  aim- 
less man,  the  man  whose  life  lies  and  swings  like  a 
pool,  instead  of  flowing  straight  onward  like  a  river. 
We  revel  in  the  making  of  specialists.  Often  it  seems 
as  if  the  more  narrow  and  straight  we  could  make  the 
line  which  runs  between  the  nature  and  its  work,  the 
more  beautiful  we  thought  it.  We  make  our  boys 
choose  their  electives  when  they  go  to  college,  decide 
at  once  on  what  they  mean  to  do,  and  pour  all  the 
stream  of  knowledge  down  the  sluiceway  which  leads 
to  that  one  wheel.  Perhaps  we  overdo  it,  but  no 
thinking  man  dreams  of  saying  that  the  thing  itself  is 
wrong.  This  movement  of  a  man's  whole  life  along 
some  clearly  apprehended  line  of  self-development  and 
self-accomplishment,  this  reaching  of  a  life  out  forward 
to  its  own  best  attainment,  no  man  can  live  as  a  man 
ought  to  live  without  it.  The  men  who  have  no  pur- 
pose, the  men  in  whose  life  this  first  dimension  of 
length  is  wanting  or  is  very  weak,  are  good  for  nothing. 
They  lie  in  the  world  like  mere  pulpy  masses,  giving  it 
no  strength  or  interest  or  character. 

Set  yourself  earnestly  to  see  what  you  were  made  to 
do,  and  then  set  yourself  earnestly  to  do  it.  That  is 
the  first  thing  that  we  want  to  say  to  our  young  man 
in  the  building  of  whose  life  we  feel  an  interest.     As 


116  THE  SYMMETRY  OF  LIFE. 

we  say  it  we  feel  almost  a  hesitation,  it  may  be,  because 
the  exhortation  sounds  so  selfish.  Self-study  and  seK- 
culture,  surely  that  makes  a  very  selfish  life.  Indeed  it 
does.  But  he  has  thought  very  little  who  has  not  dis- 
covered two  things  concerning  selfishness.  First,  that 
there  is  a  lofty  selfishness,  a  high  care  for  our  own 
culture,  which  is  a  duty,  and  not  a  fault.  And  secondly, 
that  he  who  in  this  highest  way  cares  for  himself  and 
seeks  for  himself  his  own  best  good,  must,  whether  he 
thinks  of  doing  it  or  not,  help  other  men's  development 
as  well  as  his  own.  It  is  only  the  line  which  is  seeking 
something  that  is  low,  that  can  pierce  through  the  live 
mass  of  men's  lives  and  interests  and  be  as  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  them  all  as  I  pictured  just  now.  Even  the 
railroad  track,  hurrying  to  the  Pacific,  must  leave  some- 
thing of  civilizing  infiuence  on  the  prairies  which  it 
crosses.  In  the  highest  and  purest  sense  of  the  word 
there  certainly  was  selfishness  in  Jesus.  No  man 
might  tempt  or  force  Him  from  the  resolute  determina- 
tion to  unfold  His  appointed  life  and  be  His  perfect 
self  The  world  is  right  when  it  follows  its  blind  in- 
stinct and  stands,  with  some  kind  of  gratitude  though 
not  a  gratitude  of  the  most  loving  sort,  beside  the  grave 
of  some  man  who  in  life  has  been  loftily  possessed  with 
the  passion  for  self-culture,  and  has  never  thought  of 
benefiting  the  world  ;  for  if  his  passion  for  self- culture 
has  really  been  of  the  most  lofty  kind,  the  world  must 
be  the  better  for  it. 

Therefore  we  may  freely  say  to  any  young  man,  Find 
your  purpose  and  fling  your  life  out  to  it ;  and  the  loftier 
your  purpose  is,  the  more  sure  you  will  be  to  make  the 
world  richer  with  every  enrichment  of  yourself.     And 


THE   SYMMETRY  OF  LIFE.  117 

tills,  you  see,  comes  to  the  same  thing  as  saying  that 
this  first  dimension  of  life,  which  we  call  Length,  the 
more  loftily  it  is  sought,  has  always  a  tendency  to  pro- 
duce the  second  dimension  of  life,  which  we  called 
Breadth.  Of  that  second  dimension  let  us  go  on  now  to 
speak.  I  have  ventured  to  call  this  quality  of  breadth 
in  a  man's  life  its  outreach  laterally.  When  that  ten- 
dency of  which  I  have  just  been  talking,  the  tendency 
of  a  man's  career,  the  more  loftily  it  is  pursued,  to  bring 
him  into  sympathy  and  relationship  with  other  men, 
—  when  that  tendency,  I  say,  is  consciously  and  delib- 
erately acknowledged,  and  a  man  comes  to  value  his 
own  personal  career  because  of  the  way  in  which  it  re- 
lates him  to  his  brethren  and  the  help  which  it  permits 
him  to  offer  them,  then  his  life  has  distinctly  begun  to 
open  in  this  new  direction,  and  to  its  length  it  has  added 
breadth.  There  are  men  enough  with  whom  no  such 
opening  seems  to  take  place.  You  know  them  well ; 
men  eager,  earnest,  and  intense,  reaching  forward  toward 
their  prize,  living  straight  onward  in  their  clearly  appre- 
hended line  of  life  ;  but  to  all  appearance,  so  far  as  you 
and  I  can  see,  living  exactly  as  they  would  live  if  they 
were  the  only  living  beings  on  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
or  as  if  all  the  other  beings  witli  whom  they  came 
in  contact  were  only  like  the  wooden  rounds  upon  the 
ladder  by  which  they  climbed  to  their  own  personal 
ambition.  Such  men  you  have  all  known ;  men  who 
could  not  conceive  of  any  other  life  as  valuable,  happy, 
or  respectable,  except  their  own  ;  men  "  wrapped  up  in 
themselves,"  as  we  say, —  an  envelope  as  thick  as  leather, 
through  which  no  pressure  of  any  other  life  or  character 
could  reach  them.     And  the  one  feeling  that  you  have 


118  THE   SYMMETRY   OF   LIFE. 

about  such  perfect  specialists  is  the  wonder  that  so  great 
intelligence  can  be  compressed  into  such  narrowness. 
They  are  as  bright  and  sharp  as  needles,  and  as  hard 
and  narrow. 

But  when  a  man  has  length  and  breadth  of  life  to- 
gether, we  feel  at  once  how  the  two  help  each  other. 
Length  without  breadth  is  hard  and  narrow.  Breadth 
without  length, — sympathy  with  others  in  a  man  who  has 
no  intense  and  clear  direction  for  himseK,  —  is  soft  and 
weak.  You  see  this  in  the  instinctive  and  strong  dis- 
like which  all  men  have  for  the  professional  reformer 
and  philanthropist.  The  world  dislikes  a  man  who, 
with  no  definite  occupation  of  his  own,  not  trying  to  be 
anything  particular  himself,  devotes  himself  to  telling 
other  people  what  they  ought  to  be.  It  may  allow  his 
good  intentions,  but  it  will  not  feel  his  influence.  The 
man  whom  the  world  delights  to  feel  is  the  man  who 
has  evidently  conceived  some  strong  and  distinct  pur- 
pose for  himself,  from  which  he  will  allow  nothing  to 
turn  his  feet  aside,  who  means  to  be  something  with  all 
his  soul ;  and  yet  who  finds,  in  his  own  earnest  effort  to 
fill  out  his  own  career,  the  interpretation  of  the  careers 
of  other  men  ;  and  also  finds,  in  sympathy  with  other 
men,  the  transfiguration  and  sustainment  of  his  own 
appointed  struggle. 

Indeed  these  are  the  two  ways  in  which  the  relation 
between  the  length  and  breadth  of  a  man's  life,  between 
his  energy  in  his  own  career  and  his  sympathy  with  the 
careers  of  other  men,  comes  out  and  shows  itself  First, 
the  man's  own  career  becomes  to  him  the  interpretation 
of  the  careers  of  other  men ;  and  secondly,  by  his  sym- 
pathy with  other  men,  his  own  life  displays  to  him  its 


THE   SYMMETRY  OF  LIFE.  119 

best  capacity.  The  first  of  these  is  very  beautiful  to 
watch.  Imagine  the  reformer,  whom  I  spoke  of,  sud- 
denly called  to  forget  the  work  of  helping  other  men, 
and  to  plunge  into  some  work  of  his  own.  With  what 
surprise  at  his  own  increase  of  wisdom  be  would  come 
back,  by  and  by,  to  the  help  of  his  brethren  !  What  far 
wiser  and  more  reverent  hands  he  would  lay  upon  their 
lives ;  with  what  tones  of  deepened  understanding  he 
would  speak  to  their  needs  and  sins  and  temptations, 
after  he  had  himself  tried  to  live  a  true  life  of  his  own  ! 
This  is  the  reason,  I  suppose,  why,  in  the  Bible,  the 
ministry  of  angels  to  mankind,  while  it  is  clearly  in- 
timated, is  made  so  little  of.  It  is  because,  however 
real  it  is,  it  could  not  be  brought  very  close  to  the 
intelligence  and  gratitude  of  men,  so  long  as  the  personal 
lives  of  the  angels  are  hidden  in  mystery.  Only  he 
who  lives  a  life  of  his  own  can  help  the  lives  of  other 
men.  Surely  there  is  here  one  of  the  simplest  and 
strongest  views  which  a  man  possibly  can  take  of  his 
own  life.  "  Let  me  live,"  he  may  say,  "  as  fully  as  I 
can,  in  order  that  in  this  life  of  mine  I  may  learn  what 
life  really  is,  and  so  be  fit  to  understand  and  help  the 
lives  of  men  about  me.  Let  me  make  my  own  career 
as  vivid  and  successful  as  possible,  that  in  it  I  may  get 
at  the  secret  of  life,  which,  when  I  have  once  found  it, 
will  surely  be  the  key  to  other  lives  besides  my  own." 
He  who  should  talk  and  think  so  of  his  own  career 
would  evidently  have  gone  far  towards  solving  the 
problem  of  the  apparent  incompatibility  between  intense 
devotion  to  one's  own  pursuit  and  cordial  sympathy 
with  other  men.  He  would  find,  in  the  very  heart  of 
his  own  work,  the  clew  to  the  works  of  other  men.     He 


120  THE   SYMMETRY   OF  LIFE. 

would  be  no  mere  specialist,  and  yet  he  would  toil 
hardest  of  all  men  in  the  special  task  in  which  he  was 
engaged.  But  his  task  would  be  always  glorified  and 
kept  from  narrowness  by  his  perpetual  demand  upon  it, 
that  it  should  give  him  such  a  broad  understanding  of 
human  life  in  general  as  should  make  him  fit  to  read 
and  touch  and  help  all  other  kinds  of  life. 

And  if  thus  the  special  life  does  much  to  make  the 
sympathy  with  other  lives  intelligent  and  strong,  the 
debt  is  yet  not  wholly  on  one  side.  There  is  a  wonder- 
ful power  in  sympathy  to  open  and  display  the  hidden 
richness  of  a  man's  own  seemingly  narrow  life.  You 
think  that  God  has  been  training  you  in  one  sort  of  dis- 
cipline, but  when  you  let  yourself  go  out  in  sympathy 
with  other  men  whose  disciplines  have  been  completely 
different  from  your  own,  you  find  that  in  your  discipline 
the  power  of  theirs  was  hidden.  This  is  the  power 
which  sympathy  has  to  multiply  life  and  make  out  of 
one  experience  the  substance  and  value  of  a  hundred. 
The  well  man  sympathizes  with  the  sick  man,  and 
thereby  exchanges,  as  it  were,  some  of  the  superfluous 
riches  of  his  health  into  the  other  coin  of  sickness,  gets 
something  of  the  culture  which  would  have  come  to  him 
if  he  had  himself  been  sick.  The  sick  man,  in  return, 
gets  something,  even  in  all  his  pain  and  weakness,  of 
the  discipline  of  health  and  strength.  The  same  is  true 
about  the  sympathy  of  the  rich  with  the  poor,  of  the 
believer  with  the  doubter,  of  the  hopeful  with  the  de- 
spondent, of  the  liberal  with  the  bigoted ;  aye,  even  of 
the  saint  with  the  sinner.  The  holiest  soul,  pitying  the 
brother-soul  which  has  fallen  into  vilest  vice,  gains, 
while  it  keeps  its  own  purity  unsoiled,  something  of  the 


THE   SYMMETRY   OF  LIFE,  121 

sight  of  that  other  side  of  God,  the  side  where  justice 
and  forgiveness  blend  in  the  opal  mystery  of  grace, 
which  it  would  seem  as  if  only  the  soul  that  looked  up 
out  of  the  depths  of  guilt  could  see.  All  this  is  perfect 
in  the  vicariousness  of  Christ ;  and  what  was  perfect 
there,  is  echoed  imperfectly  in  the  way  in  which  every 
man's  special  life  becomes  enlarged  and  multiplied  as 
he  looks  abroad  from  it  in  sympathy  with  other  men. 

So  much  I  say  about  the  length  and  breadth  of  life. 
One  other  dimension  still  remains.  The  length  and 
breadth  and  height  of  it  are  equal.  The  Height  of  life 
is  its  reach  upward  toward  something  distinctly  greater 
than  humanity.  Evidently  all  that  I  have  yet  described, 
all  the  length  and  breadth  of  life,  might  exist,  and 
yet  man  be  a  creature  wholly  of  the  earth.  He  might 
move  on  straight  forward  in  his  own  career.  He  might 
even  enter  into  living  sympathy  with  his  brother-men ; 
and  yet  never  look  up,  never  seem  to  have  anything  to 
do  with  anything  above  this  flat  and  level  plain  of  hu- 
man life.  A  world  without  a  sky !  How  near  any  one 
man's  life  here  and  there  may  come  to  that,  I  dare  not 
undertake  to  say.  Some  men  will  earnestly  insist  that 
that  is  just  their  life ;  that  there  is  no  divine  appetite, 
no  reaching  Godward  in  them  anywhere.  But  to  a  man 
who  thoroughly  believes  in  God,  I  think  that  it  will 
always  seem  that  such  a  life,  however  any  man  may 
think  that  he  is  living  it,  must  always  be  impossible  for 
every  man.  There  cannot  be  a  God  and  yet  any  one  of 
His  creatures  Kve  exactly  and  entirely  as  if  there  was 
no  God. 

The  reaching  of  mankind  towards  God  !  Evidently, 
in  order  that  that  may  become  a  true  dimension  of  a 


122  THE   SYMMETRY  OF  LIFE. 

man's  life,  it  must  not  be  a  special  action.  It  must  be 
something  which  pervades  all  that  he  is  and  does. 
It  must  not  be  a  solitary  column  set  on  one  holy  spot  of 
the  nature.  It  must  be  a  movement  of  the  whole  na- 
ture upward.  Here  has  been  one  of  the  great  hin- 
derances  of  the  power  of  religion  in  the  world.  Eeligion 
has  been  treated  as  if  it  were  a  special  exercise  of  a 
special  power,  not  as  if  it  were  the  possible  loftiness  of 
everything  that  a  man  could  think  or  be  or  do.  The 
result  has  been  that  certain  men  and  certain  parts  of 
men  have  stood  forth  as  distinctively  religious,  and  that 
the  possible  religiousness  of  all  life  has  been  but  very 
imperfectly  felt  and  acknowledged.  This  has  made 
religion  weak.  Man's  strongest  powers,  man's  intensest 
passions,  have  been  involved  in  the  working  out  of  his 
career,  and  in  the  development  of  his  relations  with  his 
fellow-men.  What  has  been  left  over  for  religion  has 
been  the  weakest  part  of  him,  his  sentiments  and  fears ; 
and  so  religion,  very  often,  has  come  to  seem  a  thing  of 
mystic  moods  and  frightened  superstitions.  This  pict- 
ure from  the  city  of  the  Revelation  seems  to  me  to  make 
the  matter  very  clear.  The  height  of  life,  its  reach  to- 
ward God,  must  be  coextensive  with,  must  be  part  of 
the  one  same  symmetrical  whole  with,  the  length  of  life 
or  its  reach  towards  its  personal  ambition,  and  the 
breadth  of  life  or  its  reach  towards  the  sympathy  of 
brother-lives.  It  is  when  a  man  begins  to  know  the 
ambition  of  his  life  not  simply  as  the  choice  of  his  own 
will  but  as  the  wise  assignment  of  God's  love ;  and  to 
know  his  relations  to  his  brethren  not  simply  as  the 
result  of  his  own  impulsive  affections  but  as  the  seek- 
ing of  his  soul  for  these  souls  because  they  all  belong 


THE   SYMMETKY  OF  LIFK  123 

to  the  great  Father-soul;  it  is  then  that  life  for  that 
man  begins  to  lift  itself  all  over  and  to  grow  towards 
completion  upward  through  all  its  length  and  breadth. 
That  is  a  noble  time,  a  bewildering  and  exalting  time  in 
any  of  our  lives,  when  into  everything  that  we  are  doing 
enters  the  spirit  of  God,  and  thenceforth  moving  ever 
up  toward  tlie  God  to  whom  it  belongs,  that  Spirit, 
dwelling  in  our  life,  carries  our  life  up  with  it ;  not 
separating  our  life  from  the  earth,  but  making  every 
part  of  it  while  it  still  keeps  its  hold  on  earth,  soar  up 
and  have  to  do  with  heaven ;  so  completing  life  in  its 
height,  by  making  it  divine. 

To  any  man  in  whom  that  uplifting  of  life  has 
genuinely  begun,  all  life  without  it  must  seem  very  flat 
and  poor.  My  dear  friends,  this  is  Advent  Sunday. 
Once  more  wrought  into  all  our  service,  pressed  into  all 
our  hearts,  has  come  to-day  the  rich,  wonderful  truth 
that  God  once  came  into  our  world.  And  that  one 
coming  of  God  we  know  gets  its  great  value  from  being 
the  type  and  promise  of  the  truth  that  God  is  always 
coming.  And  for  God  to  come  into  the  world  means 
for  Him  to  come  into  our  lives.  On  Advent  Sunday, 
then,  let  us  get  close  hold  of  this  truth.  These  lives  of 
ours,  hurrying  on  in  their  ambitions,  spreading  out  in 
their  loves,  they  are  capable  of  being  filled  with  God, 
possessed  by  His  love,  eager  after  His  communion ;  and, 
if  they  can  be,  if  they  are,  tlien,  without  losing  their 
eager  pursuit  of  their  appointed  task,  without  losing  their 
cordial  reaching  after  the  lives  around  them,  they  shall 
be  quietly,  steadily,  nobly  lifted  into  something  of  the 
peace  and  dignity  of  the  God  whom  they  aspire  to. 
The  fret  and  restlessness  shall  fade  out  of  their  ambi- 


124  THE  SYMMETRY   OF  LIFE. 

tions ;  the  jealousy  shall  disappear  out  of  their  loves. 
Love  for  themselves  and  love  for  their  brethren,  robed  and 
enfolded  into  the  love  for  God,  shall  be  purified  and 
cleared  of  all  meanness,  shall  be  filled  with  a  strength 
as  calm  as  it  is  strong.  0,  my  dear  friends,  there  is 
room  for  that  new  dimension  over  the  lives  that  all  of 
you  are  living.  Above  the  head  of  the  most  earthly 
of  you  heaven  is  open.  You  may  aspire  into  it  and 
complete  yourself  upward  if  you  will.  All  that  you  are 
now  imperfectly,  as  an  energetic,  sympathetic  man,  you 
may  be  perfectly  as  the  child  of  God,  knowing  your 
Father  and  living  in  consecrated  obedience  to  Him. 

These  are  the  three  dimensions  then  of  a  full  human 
life,  its  length,  its  breadth,  its  height.  The  life  which 
has  only  length,  only  intensity  of  ambition,  is  narrow. 
The  life  that  has  length  and  breadth,  intense  ambition 
and  broad  humanity,  is  thin.  It  is  like  a  great,  flat 
plain,  of  which  one  wearies,  and  which  sooner  or  later 
wearies  of  itself.  The  life  which  to  its  length  and 
breadth  adds  height,  which  to  its  personal  ambition  and 
sympathy  with  man,  adds  the  love  and  obedience  of 
God,  completes  itself  into  the  cube  of  the  eternal  city 
and  is  the  life  complete. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  the  life  of  the  great  apostle, 
the  manly,  many-sided  Paul.  "  I  press  toward  the 
mark  for  the  prize  of  my  high  calUng ; "  he  writes  to 
the  Philippians.  That  is  the  length  of  life  for  him. 
"  I  will  gladly  spend  and  be  spent  for  you  ; "  he  M^rites 
to  the  Corinthians.  There  is  the  breadth  of  life  for 
him.  "  God  hath  raised  us  up  and  made  us  sit  to- 
gether in  heavenly  places  in  Christ  Jesus  ; "  he  writes 


THE  SYMMETRY   OF   LIFE.  125 

to  the  Ephesians.  There  is  the  height  of  life  for  him. 
You  can  add  nothing  to  these  three  dimensions  when 
you  try  to  account  to  yourself  for  the  impression  of 
completeness  which  comes  to  you  out  of  his  simple, 
lofty  story. 

We  need  not  stop  with  him.  Look  at  the  Lord 
of  Paul.  See  how  in  Christ  the  same  symmetrical 
manhood  shines  yet  more  complete.  See  what  intense 
ambition  to  complete  His  work,  what  tender  sympathy 
with  every  struggling  brother  by  His  side,  and  at  the 
same  time  what  a  perpetual  dependence  on  His  Father 
is  in  Him.  "For  this  cause  came  I  into  the  world." 
"  For  their  sakes  I  sanctify  myself"  "  Now,  O  Father, 
glorify  Thou  me."  Leave  either  of  those  out  and  you 
have  not  the  perfect  Christ,  not  the  entire  symmetry  of 
manhood. 

If  we  try  to  gather  into  shape  some  picture  of  what 
the  perfect  man  of  heaven  is  to  be,  still  we  must  keep 
the  symmetry  of  these  his  three  dimensions.  It  must 
be  that  forever  before  each  glorified  spirit  in  the  other 
life  there  shall  be  set  one  goal  of  peculiar  ambition,  his 
goal,  after  which  he  is  peculiarly  to  strive,  the  struggle 
after  which  is  to  make  his  eternal  life  to  be  forever 
different  from  every  other  among  all  the  hosts  of 
heaven.  And  yet  it  must  be  that  as  each  soul  strives 
towards  his  own  attainment  he  shall  be  knit  forever 
into  closer  and  closer  union  with  all  the  other  countless 
souls  which  are  striving  after  theirs.  And  the  inspiring 
power  of  it  all,  the  source  of  all  the  energy  and  all  the 
love,  must  then  be  clear  beyond  all  doubt ;  the  ceaseless 
flood  of  light  forever  pouring  forth  from  the  self-living 
God  to  fiU  and  feed  the  open  lives  of  His  redeemed  who 


126  THE  SYMMETRY   OF  LIFE. 

live  by  Him.  There  is  the  symmetry  of  manhood 
perfect.  There,  in  redeemed  and  glorified  human  nature, 
is  the  true  heavenly  Jerusalem. 

I  hope  that  we  are  all  striving  and  praying  now  that 
we  may  come  to  some  such  symmetrical  completeness. 
This  is  the  glory  of  a  young  man's  life.  Do  not  dare  to 
live  without  some  clear  intention  toward  which  your 
living  shall  be  bent.  Mean  to  be  something  with  all 
your  might.  Do  not  add  act  to  act  and  day  to  day  in 
perfect  thoughtlessness,  never  asking  yourself  whither 
the  growing  line  is  leading.  But  at  the  same  time  do 
not  dare  to  be  so  absorbed  in  your  own  life,  so  wrapped 
up  in  listening  to  the  sound  of  your  own  hurrying 
wheels,  that  all  this  vast  pathetic  music,  made  up  of  the 
mingled  joy  and  sorrow  of  your  fellow-men,  shall  not 
find  out  your  heart  and  claim  it  and  make  you  rejoice 
to  give  yourself  for  them.  And  yet,  all  the  while,  keep 
the  upward  windows  open.  Do  not  dare  to  think  that 
a  child  of  God  can  worthily  work  out  his  career  or 
worthily  serve  God's  other  children  unless  he  does  both 
in  the  love  and  fear  of  God  their  Father.  Be  sure  that 
ambition  and  charity  will  both  grow  mean  unless  they 
are  both  inspired  and  exalted  by  religion.  Energy, 
love,  and  faith,  those  make  the  perfect  man.  And 
Christ,  who  is  the  perfectness  of  all  of  them,  gives  them 
all  three  to  any  young  man  who,  at  the  very  outset  of 
his  life,  gives  up  himself  to  Him.  If  this  morning  there 
is  any  young  man  here  who  generously  wants  to  live  a 
whole  life,  wants  to  complete  himself  on  every  side,  to 
him  Christ,  the  Lord,  stands  ready  to  give  these  three, 
energy,  love,  and  faith,  and  to  train  them  in  him  all 
together,  till  they  make  in  him  the  perfect  man. 


vm 

HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  i 

"And  Jesus  said  unto  them,  How  many  loaves  hare  ye?**^- 
Matt.  XT.  34. 

It  was  one  of  the  miracles  of  Jesus  in  which  His 
nature  was  seen  most  interestingly.  A  multitude  of 
people  had  followed  him  into  the  country,  anxious  to 
hear  Him  preach,  some  of  them  also  needing  and 
expecting  that  He  would  cure  their  sicknesses.  They 
had  lingered  with  Him  for  three  days,  not  finding  it  in 
their  hearts  to  leave  Him  and  return,  until  their  food 
was  all  exhausted  and  they  were  in  wretched  plight. 
Then  Jesus  declared  His  pity  for  them  and  consulted 
with  His  disciples.  "  I  have  compassion  on  the  multi- 
tude," He  said,  "  because  they  continue  with  Me  now 
three  days  and  have  nothing  to  eat,  and  I  will  not  send 
them  away  fasting  lest  they  faint  in  the  way."  And 
His  disciples  reminded  Him  how  impossible  it  was  to 
buy  any  food  off  in  the  desert  where  they  were ;  and 
then  Jesus,  intending  to  relieve  the  people's  wants  by 
extraordinary  power,  turned  to  His  disciples  and  asked 
them  how  many  loaves  of  bread  they  had.  They  told 
Him  seven,  and  a  few  little  fishes.  And  He  took  the 
little  which  they  had  and  blessed  it,  and  it  became  under 
His  blessing  abundant  for  the  supply  of  all  the  crowd. 

Such   is  the  story.     The  need  of  the  great,  hungry 


128        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

host  before  Him  touches  the  Lord  and  makes  Him  use 
His  power  to  relieve  them.  But  what  is  striking  in  the 
narrative  is  this,  that  when  Jesus  is  moved  by  their 
suffering,  He  is  moved  in  all  His  nature.  Every  part 
of  Him  is  stirred.  Not  merely  His  emotions  and  His 
impulses,  so  that  He  is  eager  to  relieve  at  once  the 
wretchedness  which  looks  up  to  Him  out  of  their  famished 
eyes,  but  His  wisdom  is  stirred.  All  the  principles  of 
His  life  start  into  action  together,  all  His  care  and 
pity.  His  care  and  pity  for  the  soul  as  well  as  for  the 
body  move  at  once.  It  is  this  completeness  of  His 
nature,  the  way  in  which  it  is  all  one,  and  works 
and  lives  as  one,  that  makes  Him  often  so  very  differ- 
ent from  us.  Our  lives  are  disjointed.  One  part  of  us 
works  at  a  time.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  be  brave  and 
prudent  together  ;  hard  for  us  to  be  liberal  and  just  at 
the  same  time.  Our  sympathy  is  excited,  and  we  help 
a  man  often  in  a  way  that  does  more  harm  than  good, 
because  we  help  with  only  one  hand,  with  only  half 
our  nature ;  with  our  pity  but  not  with  our  wisdom ; 
with  care  for  his  hunger  but  with  no  care  for  his  self- 
respect  and  manliness.  But  when  Christ  helps  a  man 
His  whole  nature  in  complete  balance  moves  upon  that 
other  life.  He  feels  all  its  claims  and  needs  in  their 
just  proportion.  So  He  meets  Nicodemus  in  the  mid- 
night chamber,  and  the  young  man  who  comes  to  Him 
in  the  temple,  and  Thomas  after  the  resurrection. 

Now  in  this  miracle  of  Jesus  which  I  have  recalled 
to  you  there  is  a  meeting  of  generosity  and  frugality 
which  is  striking  and  suggestive.  These  two  things 
do  meet  indeed  with  us.  We  try  to  be  generous  and 
frugal  at  the  same  time,  but  the  result  in  us  is  mean. 


HOW  MANY  LOAVES   HAVE  YE  ?  129 

We  try  to  give  and  yet  to  save.  We  try  to  satisfy  the 
instinct  which  makes  us  want  to  aid  our  brethren,  and 
at  the  same  time  not  to  disappoint  the  instinct  which 
makes  us  want  to  save  and  spare  the  things  we  have. 
But  the  result  in  us  is  mean.  When  Christ  unites 
generosity  and  frugality  the  result  in  Him  is  noble. 
We  feel  His  pity  and  care  for  the  poor  people  a  great  deal 
more  when  we  see  Him  take  the  wretched  little  stock 
of  food  which  they  possessed  into  His  hands  and  make 
that  the  basis  of  His  bounty,  than  if  with  an  easy  sweep 
of  His  hand  He  had  bid  the  skies  open  and  rain  manna 
and  quails  once  more  upon  the  hungry  host.  His 
generosity  is  emphasized  for  us  by  its  frugal  methods, 
and  His  frugality  is  dignified  by  its  generous  purpose. 

But  surely  the  act  is  a  very  striking  one.  Here  was 
He  who  could  do  everything.  What  hindered  Him 
from  sweeping  the  loaves  they  had  aside  and,  by  a 
superb  exercise  of  power,  bidding  the  very  desert  where 
they  stood  burst  into  a  wilderness  of  fruits,  break  its 
hard  ground  with  orchard  trees  all  grown  and  laden, 
with  streams  of  sweet  water  running  down  between 
them.  But  no  !  He  brings  out  the  poor  remnant  which 
was  so  little  and  so  miserable  that  they  had  thought 
nothing  of  it.  He  has  to  ask  for  it.  They  do  not  offer 
it.  He  says  "  How  many  loaves  have  ye  ? "  and  they 
seem  to  answer  "  Here  is  this,  but  what  is  this  good 
for  ? "  Then  He  takes  that  and  multiplies  it  into  all 
they  need.  It  seems  as  if  there  were  two  principles 
here,  so  fundamental  that  the  divine  power  of  Jesus 
worked  by  them  almost  of  necessity,  so  important  that 
they  must  be  made  prominent  even  in  all  His  impetuous 
eagerness  to  help  those  starving  men.     The  first  is  the 

9 


130        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

principle  of  continuity,  that  what  is  to  be  must  come 
out  of  what  has  been,  that  new  things  must  come  to  be 
by  an  enlargement,  a  development,  a  change  and  growth 
of  old  things ;  and  the  second  is  the  principle  of  econ- 
omy, that  nothing  however  little  or  poor  is  to  be  wasted. 
They  are  two  simple  principles.  I  want  to  trace  with 
you  to-day  the  way  in  which  they  run  through  many 
departments  of  life.  But  notice,  first,  how  clearly  they 
stand  out  here  in  the  miracle. 

There  are  two  ideas  which  belong  to  the  notion  of 
vast  power  in  our  crude  conceptions  of  it.  One  is 
spasmodicalness  and  the  other  is  waste.  It  is  strange 
how  both  of  these  ideas  appear  in  all  men's  first  con- 
ceptions of  the  supernatural  and  of  omnipotence.  The 
first  notions  of  a  Deity  are  of  One  who  is  above  all  law 
and  order  and  economy.  Let  the  poor  be  niggardly,  a 
slave  to  rules,  counting  over  his  little  stock,  squeezing 
every  penny  that  he  pays ;  but  let  the  All-Powerful  be 
open-handed,  counting  as  nothing  what  other  beings 
must  save,  originating  life  whenever  life  is  needed,  full 
of  an  easy  spontaneity,  flinging  the  miracles  of  creation 
everywhere.  But  it  is  striking  to  see  how  as  men  go 
on  and  learn  more  of  God,  these  ideas  which  were  at 
first  cast  almost  indignantly  out  of  their  conception  of 
Him,  gradually  come  back  and  are  set  in  the  place  of 
highest  honor.  It  is  God's  highest  glory  that  He  is  a 
God  of  law.  Continuousness  is  the  crown  of  His  gov- 
ernment. That  He  brings  every  future  out  of  some 
past  is  the  charm  of  all  His  government.  That  He 
lets  nothing  go  to  waste  is  the  highest  perfection  of 
His  boundless  resource.  This  is  the  highest  knowledge 
of  God.     Continuity  and  economy  are  His  solemn  foot- 


HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ?        131 

prints  by  which  we  trace  His  presence  in  our  world.  The 
need  of  evolution,  the  necessity  that  everything  which 
is  to  be  should  come  out  of  something  which  has  been 
before,  and  the  abhorrence  of  waste,  —  continuity  and 
economy,  —  these  are  the  proof-marks  of  Divinity. 

Let  us  remember,  first,  how  these  two  principles  are 
stamped  on  all  the  operations  of  nature.  We  are  all 
learning  more  and  more,  to  some  people's  dismay,  to 
other  people's  joy  and  inspiration,  how  nature  loves  to 
develop,  how  rare  the  acts  of  real  creation  are.  The 
farmer  goes  and  stands  among  rich  western  fields,  and 
they  cry  out  to  him,  "  Give  us  seed  and  we  will  give 
you  back  a  harvest  that  shall  bewilder  you  with  its 
immensity.  There  is  no  end  to  what  we  can  do  if  you 
give  us  seed,  but  without  seed  we  can  do  nothing." 
You  go  to  Nature  and  say,  "  Feed  me  or  I  shall  starve ; " 
and  her  question  comes  back  to  you,  "  How  many  loaves 
have  you  ?  Give  me  something  to  begin  with,  however 
little  it  may  be."  Drop  the  old  remnants  of  a  past  life 
into  the  ever  fruitful  soil,  and  all  the  possibilities  of 
new  life  open.  The  spring-time  finds  last  summer's 
roots  still  remaining  in  the  ground,  and  quickens  them 
to  life  again,  and  multiplies  them  into  a  richer  summer 
still.  Ingenious  Nature  finds  a  germ  wherever  it  is 
dropped  ;  but  without  the  germ  she  will  do  nothing. 
Mere  spontaneity  she  disowns  and  disproves  more  and 
more.  Think  what  a  place  the  world  would  be  to  live 
in  if  this  were  not  so,  if  nature  were  a  wizard,  fitful  and 
whimsical,  doing  her  wonders  in  no  sequel  or  connection 
with  each  other,  with  her  pets  and  favorites,  instead  of 
being,  as  she  is,  a  mother  with  her  great,  wise,  reason- 
able laws  of  the  house  which  press  alike  on  all  her 


132        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE? 

children,  which  no  one  of  the  children  thinks  of  seeing 
changed  or  violated.  That  is  what  makes  the  world 
such  a  good  home  for  man  to  dwell  in,  his  school- 
room and  his  home  at  once.  If  anywhere  in  all  the 
world  it  were  on  certain  record,  past  all  doubt,  that  just 
one  solitary  field,  hidden  away  in  some  remote  valley, 
had  burst  into  a  harvest  of  corn  without  a  seed  of  corn 
having  been  sown  in  it  by  design  or  accident,  that  one 
freak  of  spontaneousness  must  work  great  harm  among 
mankind.  Men  enough  there  are  who  would  make  that 
fact  their  one  fact  in  natural  science,  and,  disregarding 
the  million  fields  which  gave  no  harvest  except  in  answer 
to  seed,  would  go  looking  for  the  second  field  that  was 
to  give  its  crop  for  nothing :  as  when  one  man  has  found 
a  pot  of  gold,  a  hundred  more  forget  that  gold,  by  the 
world's  great  general  law,  is  earned,  not  found,  and  so 
go  digging  where  they  have  buried  nothing,  seeking  a 
prize  that  is  not  there.  It  is  the  continuity  of  life,  the 
continuity  of  nature,  that  is  our  salvation.  "  Nothing 
from  nothing  "  is  the  first  law  of  her  household,  and  her 
dullest  children  must  learn  it,  for  it  is  written  on  the 
waUs  that  shelter  them,  on  the  ground  they  tread,  on 
the  table  from  which  they  eat,  and  on  the  tools  with 
which  they  work. 

And  her  law  of  economy  is  just  as  clear.  Profusion, 
but  no  waste ;  this  is  the  lesson  that  nature  reads  us 
everywhere.  The  dead  leaves  of  this  autumn  are  worked 
into  next  year's  soil.  The  little  stream  that  has  watered 
the  greenness  of  many  meadows  goes  afterwards  to  do 
duty  in  the  great  sea.  The  vast  surrounding  atmosphere 
is  made  efficient  over  and  over  again  for  the  breath  of 
living  men.    Everywhere  profusion,  but  no  waste.     For 


HOW  MANY   LOAVES  HAVE  YE?  133 

men  who  need  to  be  trained  to  reasonableness  and  care, 
God  has  built  just  the  home  they  needed  for  their  train- 
ing, and  sent  us  to  Uve  in  this  star  which  shines  among 
His  other  stars  steadily  and  soberly  with  its  double 
light  of  continuity  and  economy. 

The  same  truth  appears  in  the  use  which  God  makes 
of  men  in  the  world.  One  of  the  most  interesting 
studies  of  history  is  to  see  how  unspasmodic  is  the  ap- 
pearance of  great  men.  They  are  not  accidents.  Their 
lives  are  not  isolated  unaccountable  meteors.  However, 
little  it  may  be  seen  at  the  time  of  their  lives,  those  who 
live  after  them,  and  look  back  over  the  ranges  of  Idstory, 
can  see  that  the  heroes  and  great  men  are  the  culmina- 
tion and  result  of  processes.  The  times  in  which  they 
live,  the  smaller  men  who  have  gone  before  them,  are 
necessary  to  make  them  what  they  come  to  be.  If  it 
were  not  so,  such  lives  might  be  expected  to  start  forth 
indiscriminately  everywhere,  in  all  ages  alike,  in  all 
stages  and  kinds  of  civilization.  But  barbarism  is  a  flat 
level  of  monotony ;  and  certain  artificial  periods  of  cul- 
ture are  barren  of  all  greatness.  The  personal  element 
in  the  hero  must  be  recognized.  No  age  or  circum- 
stances can  make  a  great  man  of  a  little  one.  But  still 
all  history  bears  witness  that  when  God  means  to  make 
a  great  man.  He  puts  the  circumstances  of  the  world  and 
the  lives  of  lesser  men  under  tribute.  He  does  not  fling 
His  hero  like  an  aerolite  out  of  the  sky.  He  bids  him 
grow  like  an  oak  out  of  the  earth.  All  earnest,  pure, 
unselfish,  faithful  men  who  have  lived  their  obscure 
lives  well,  have  helped  to  make  him.  God  has  let  none 
of  them  be  wasted.  A  thousand  unrecorded  patriots 
helped   to   make  Washington;    a  thousand   lovers    of 


134        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE? 

liberty  contributed  to  Lincoln.  It  is  the  continuity  and 
economy  of  human  life.  The  great  feast  grows  out  of 
the  few  loaves  and  fishes.  And  any  man  who  in  his 
'  small  degree  is  living  like  the  child  of  God,  has  a  right 
to  all  the  comfort  of  knowing  that  God  will  not  let  his 
life  be  lost,  but  will  use  it  in  the  making  of  some  great 
child  of  God,  as  he  used  centuries  of  Jewish  lives, 
prophets,  priests,  patriots,  kings,  peasants,  women,  chil- 
dren, to  make  the  human  life  of  His  Incarnate  Son. 

The  same  is  true  of  truths,  as  well  as  of  men.  All  the 
history  of  the  progress  of  men's  thought  bears  witness 
that  when  God  wants  to  give  men  knowledge  which 
they  have  not  had  before.  He  always  opens  it  to  them 
out  of  something  which  they  have  already  known. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  the  dropping  of  a  great  truth 
any  more  than  of  a  great  man,  suddenly,  ready-made, 
out  of  the  sky.  "  How  is  it  with  Eevelation  ?  How  is 
it  with  Christianity  ? "  you  say.  There,  more  than  any- 
where, it  certainly  is  true  that  God  works  continuously 
and  economically.  What  does  Judaism  mean  ?  When 
God  wanted  to  give  the  world  the  truth  of  Christ,  He 
took  that  Hebrew  nation  which  had  some  truth,  truth 
of  the  right  sort,  though  it  was  very  meagre  and  in- 
sufficient, and  mixed  up  with  other  things  which  were 
not  true  ;  He  took  that  truth  and  brought  Christianity 
out  of  that.  And  so  when  He  has  wanted  to  bring  His 
Christianity,  His  highest  truth,  into  any  new  region.  He 
has  always  made  it  appear  as  the  fulfilment,  the  com- 
pletion, of  what  the  people  of  that  region  knew  already. 
Paul  stands  upon  Mars'  Hill  at  Athens,  and  wants  to 
show  those  people  Christ.  How  does  he  begin  ?  He 
takes  what  he  finds  there.     He  points  to  their  altar  to 


HOW  MANY  LOAVES   HAVE  YE  ?  135 

the  unknown  god,  and  says,  "  Him  whom  ye  ignorantly 
worship  I  declare  to  you."  He  opens  the  books  of  their 
own  writers  and  finds  there  his  text,  "As  certain  of 
your  own  poets  have  said."  Out  of  their  bit  of  truth  he 
opens  the  rich  completeness  of  the  truth  he  has  to  tell. 
Is  it  not  just  exactly  the  miracle  of  Christ  ?  Paul  comes 
and  says  to  Athens,  "  How  many  loaves  have  you  ? " 
and  they  say,  "  Seven,  and  a  few  little  fishes.  We 
believe  in  God  ;  we  believe  in  responsibility ;  we  believe 
in  man's  childhood  to  God  ;  we  believe  in  worship." 
And  there,  upon  the  Areopagus,  Paul  did  what  His 
Master  did  long  before,  by  the  Sea  of  Galilee ;  "  He  took 
the  seven  loaves  and  the  fishes,  and  gave  thanks,  and 
brake  them  and  gave  to  the  multitude  ;  and  they  did  all 
eat  and  were  filled." 

And  so  it  always  is.  There  is  a  doctrine  which  we 
hear  from  time  to  time,  that  it  is  not  the  amount  of  truth 
which  a  man  knows,  but  his  earnestness  in  holding 
what  he  does  know ;  not  his  opinions,  but  his  sincerity 
in  holding  his  opinions,  which  is  of  value.  That  seems 
to  me  after  all  to  be  probably  only  a  clumsy  way  of 
getting  hold  of  this  idea,  that  God  always  brings  new 


\ 


truth  out  of  old  truth,  and  so  that  whoever  has  any  bi€N 
of  truth  and  really  holds  it  fast  is  within  the  possibility  1 
of  all  the  truth  that  God  can  give  to  man.  There  is  no 
spontaneous  generation  of  truth.  "  To  him  that  hath 
shall  be  given."  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  light  here  of  just  the  sort  which  a  great  many 
people  need  now.  Men' look  around  them  and  they  say 
that  old  systems  of  religious  thought  are  changing. 
Certainly  they  are.  They  always  have  been  changing. 
There  never  was  a  time  when  they  stood  still.     There 


136        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

is  no  delusion  about  history  more  complete  than  to 
suppose  that  there  has  ever  been  a  time  when,  from  year 
to  year  and  over  a  large  body  of  mankind,  religious 
ideas  have  been  fixed  and  permanent  and  unanimously 
held.  No  man  can  put  his  finger  upon  such  a  period. 
They  have  always  been  changing  as  they  are  to-day. 
But  this  has  been  always  true,  that  the  new  idea  has 
always  been  born  of  the  old,  that  when  men  have  ad- 
vanced to  higher  truth  it  has  been  from  the  basis  of  the 
truth  which  they  have  held  already.  It  has  been  not 
by  flinging  their  net  out  into  the  heavens  in  hopes  to 
catch  a  star,  but  by  digging  deeper  into  the  substance 
of  the  earth  on  which  they  stood,  and  finding  there  a 
root.  And  that  is  what  we  have  to  look  for  in  the 
future.  You  and  I  cling  to  the  old  historic  statements 
of  our  faith.  We  hold  fast  by  the  old  historic  church 
as  it  appears  to-day.  What  is  our  feeling  as  we  hold 
fast  there  ?  Is  it  that  the  church  to-day  knows  all  the 
truth  which  man  will  ever  know  ?  Is  it  that  the  relig- 
ious conceptions  which  prevail  to-day  will  never  change  ? 
A  man  must  be  deaf  to  the  voices  of  the  history  behind 
him,  blind  to  the  signs  of  times  around  him,  before  he 
can  think  that.  We  stand  expecting  change  and  prog- 
ress, new  truth,  new  light.  But  we  stand  here  in  the 
historic  church,  in  the  historic  truth,  because  we  believe 
that  the  new  truth  must  come  out  of  this  old  truth,  the 
perfect  truth  out  of  this  partial  truth,  some  day.  We 
keep  close  to  the  seven  loaves  because  we  believe  that 
when  the  multitude  is  fed  it  will  be  with  an  abundance 
blessed  by  God  out  of  this,  which,  however  meagre,  is 
stiU  real. 

I  would  that  men  might  understand  that  invitation 


HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE?        137 

from  the  Christian  Church  to-day.      It  is  not  as  the 

present  possessor  of  all  truth  that  she  invites  men  to 
her  household.     She  must  not  claim  that.     Men  will 
discover  that  her  claim  is  false  if  she  does.     But  it  is  as 
the  possessor  of  trutli  out  of  which  God  will  call,  nay  is 
forever  calling  new  truth,  that  she  summons  men  not 
merely  to  a  present  which  she  offers,  but  to  a  future  in 
which  she  believes.     The  church  is  progressive  by  her 
very  essence.     The  church  is  man  occupied  by  Christ. 
And  since  Christ  cannot  at  once  occupy  man  completely, 
and  cannot  be  satisfied  until  He  has  occupied  man  com- 
pletely, the  church  must  make  progress.     If  she  ceases 
to  advance  she  dies.      Only  in  all  her  progress  she  be- 
lieves in  the  continuity  and  economy  of  God.     She  looks 
for  the  truth  which  she  is  to  know  to  come  out  of  the 
truth  which  she  knows  already ;  and  she  is  sure  that  no 
duty  done  or  light  attained  in  any  most  obscure  corner 
of  her  life  is  wasted,  but  helps  to  the  perfect  duty  and 
the  perfect  light  that  are  to  be.     That  is  why  in  her  is 
the  true  home  for  the  man  who  most  hopes  and  prays 
for  the  progress  of  mankind. 

To  every  man  who  has  advanced  or  who  hopes  that 
he  may  advance  to  higher,  fuller,  truer  views  of  Chris- 
tian truth,  I  think  that  this  lesson  of  the  loaves  has 
something  very  plain  to  say.  I  see  a  man  who  thinks 
differently  to-day  from  the  way  in  which  he  thought  ten 
years  ago.  He  knows  more  truth.  He  is  sure  that  God 
has  given  him  new  knowledge.  How  shall  that  man 
look  back  to  what  he  used  to  know,  to  his  old  creed  ? 
Surely  he  may,  with  all  rejoicing  for  the  fuller  light  to 
which  he  has  been  brought,  own  the  half-light  in  which 
he  used  to  walk,  and  honor  it.     He  may  remember  with 


138        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE? 

reverence  how  through  some  most  imperfect  conception 
of  truth,  which  he  could  not  possibly  hold  now,  he  came 
into  the  larger  knowledge  where  he  now  finds  his  joy. 
Out  of  the  notions  which  are  dead  now,  he  has  drawn 
the  life  by  which  he  lives.  I  think  it  is  always  a  shame 
for  a  man  to  abuse  any  creed  out  of  which  he  has  passed 
into  what  he  holds  to  be  a  truer  creed.  When  he  held 
that  old  creed  he  was  either  sincere  or  insincere.  If  he 
was  insincere,  let  him  abuse  himself  and  not  the  creed 
which,  whatever  was  its  power  or  its  weakness,  could  do 
nothing  for  a  man  like  him.  If  he  was  sincere,  let  him 
know  that  much  of  the  good  faith  with  which  he  holds 
his  new  dear  truth  comes  from  the  training  of  that  old 
devotion.  No,  if  God  has  led  you  to  see  truth  which 
once  you  did  not  see,  and  to  reject  as  error  what  once 
you  thought  was  true,  do  not  try  to  signalize  your  new 
allegiance  by  defaming  your  old  master.  The  man  who 
thinks  to  make  much  of  the  fuller  truth  to  which  he  has 
come,  by  upbraiding  the  partial  truth  through  which  he 
came  to  it,  is  a  poor  creature.  If  I  met  a  Moliammedan 
who  had  turned  Christian,  I  would  not  like  to  hear  him 
revile  Mohammedanism.  If  I  talk  with  a  man  from  some 
other  communion  who  has  come  into  our  church,  I  think 
the  less  and  not  the  more  of  his  churchmanship  if  he  is 
always  ready  to  defame  the  mother  that  bore  him.  If 
you  are  a  more  liberal  believer  than  you  used  to  be,  the 
best  proof  that  you  can  give  of  it  will  be  in  gratefully 
honoring  the  narrower  creed  in  which  you  lived  and  by 
whose  power  you  grew  up  and  passed  on. 

Such  is  the  message  of  our  story  to  the  man  who  has 
already  advanced  to  larger  truth  than  he  once  held. 
And  when  he  turns  from  looking  back  and  still  looks 


HOW   MANY   LOAVES   HAVE   YE  ?  139 

forward,  when  he  hopes  still  to  advance,  then  it  has 
something  else  to  say  to  him.  It  bids  him  hold  fast  all 
the  truth  that  he  has  learned,  to  hold  it  all  the  faster 
because  he  knows  it  is  not  final.  The  preciousness  of 
every  particle  of  truth  !  That  is  the  lesson.  If  one 
gives  me  a  diamond  to  carry  across  the  sea,  I  may 
estimate  its  value  and  know  just  how  much  poorer  I 
shall  be  and  the  world  wiU  be  if  I  let  it  drop  into  the 
water  and  it  sinks  to  the  bottom.  But  if  one  gives  me 
a  seed  of  some  new  fruit  to  bring  to  this  new  land, 
I  look  at  it  with  awe.  It  is  mysteriously  valuable.  I 
cannot  tell  what  preciousness  is  in  it.  Harvests  on 
harvests,  food  for  whole  generations,  are  shut  up  in  its 
little  bulk.  There  always  must  be  a  difference  as  to  the 
essential  value  set  on  truth,  between  him  who  thinks 
that  truth  is  final  and  him  who  thinks  that  truth  is 
germinal,  between  him  who  thinks  it  a  diamond  and  him 
who  thinks  it  a  seed.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  think 
that  a  man  will  value  a  truth  more  if  you  teach  him 
that  it  is  the  end  of  truth,  than  if  you  teach  him  that 
it  is  only  the  beginning.  Nathanael  clings  all  the  more 
closely  to  the  certainty  that  Jesus  saw  him  under  the 
fig-tree,  because  of  the  promise  that  he  shall "  see  greater 
things  than  these."  In  the  name  of  all  you  hope  to 
know,  cling  close  to  what  you  know  already.  Make 
much  of  it,  live  up  to  it,  count  it  very  precious,  hold  it 
fast  in  the  bosom  of  a  loving  life.  Bring  what  you  have 
and  put  it  reverently  into  the  Master's  hands  that  He 
may  make  it  more.  It  is  not  good  for  any  man  to  let 
the  vastness  of  unknown  truth  make  him  disparage  the 
little  that  he  knows.  It  is  good  for  him  to  count  his 
little   precious   because   it    is  of  the  same  kind  with, 


140        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

and  may  introduce  him  to,  the  greater  after  which  he 
aspires. 

I  must  not  linger  longer  upon  the  application  of  our 
story  to  the  matter  of  belief  and  truth.  More  interest- 
ing still  are  the  ways  in  which  it  applies  to  character, 
and  especially  to  the  religious  life.  In  all  training  of 
character  the  law  of  continuity  and  economy  must  be 
supreme.  We  often  do  not  think  so.  We  are  ready  to 
fancy  that  character  can  be  spasmodic,  a  thing  of  con- 
stant new  creations,  of  abrupt  and  sudden  changes.  I 
think  that  is  the  idea  with  which  almost  all  people 
start  in  life.  By  and  by,  as  life  goes  on,  and  they  find 
that  character  does  not  change  but  perpetuates  itself, 
they  are  very  apt  to  turn  to  the  other  extreme  and  to 
believe  that  character  on<3e  fixed  is  fixed  forever,  and  so 
to  settle  into  hopelessness.  Hosts  of  young  men  are 
reckless  because  they  believe  that  by  and  by  they  can 
be  what  they  will.  Hosts  of  old  men  are  hopeless 
because  it  seems  impossible  that  they  can  ever  be  any- 
thing but  what  they  are.  But  both  are  wrong.  Not 
lawlessness,  and  not  slavish  subjection  to  law,  is  the 
system  under  which  we  live.  Progress  and  growth ;  but 
growth  from  old  conditions,  progress  from  the  basis  of 
the  old  life ;  this  is  our  law.  A  man  comes  to  you  and 
says,  "  I  have  always  been  a  bad  man,  and  I  never  can 
be  anything  else."  You  answer  him,  if  you  are  a  true 
servant  of  Christ,  "  Poor  soul,  you  little  know  the  hope 
for  all  of  us  which  is  in  Him  who  can  make  all  things 
new."  Another  man  comes  and  says,  "  I  have  been  a 
bad  man,  but  I  am  going  to  break  with  all  my  past,  to 
live  as  if  it  all  had  never  been,  to  be  throughout  another 
man."     Again  you  must  reply,  "  Poor  soul,  that  too  is 


HOW   MANY   LOAVES   HAVE   YE  ?  141 

impossible.  Be  as  different  as  you  will,  you  must  be 
the  same  man  still.  Your  future  must  come  out  of  your 
past.  Your  old  failures,  your  old  hopes,  your  old  resolu- 
tions, your  old  shames,  these  cannot  all  be  wasted.  They 
can  be  wonderfully  transformed,  but  they  cannot  be 
thrown  away."  The  good  man  stands  at  last,  the  true 
man,  fed  with  truth  and  glorifying  God  in  daily  action. 
But  he  learns  more  and  more  that  he  is  the  same  with 
the  old  man  whose  memory  he  hates.  He  has  been 
made  anew,  but  it  is  the  old  humanity  out  of  which  the 
new  life  has  been  evoked.  Is  not  this  what  many  a 
poor  creature  needs  to  know  ?  You  understand  that  you 
are  wicked.  You  understand  what  it  is  to  be  good. 
But  the  gulf  between  is  dreadful  and  impassable.  What 
is  there  in  you  that  can  grow  into  that  ?  Nothing, 
nothing,  that  can  grow  into  that  of  its  own  strength. 
You  must  go  on  forever,  and  be  forever  what  you  are, 
unless  some  higher  power  touches  you.  But  none  the 
less  is  it  true  that  when  that  higher  power  touches  you 
it  must  make  what  you  are  to  be  out  of  what  you  are 
already.  The  development  out  of  the  old  still  needs 
the  mightier  force.  Evolution  is  not  atheism.  God 
must  do  what  must  be  done,  but  God  will  do  it. 
God  will  make  you  good,  by  sending  His  light  and  love 
into  this  past  of  yours  and  giving  all  that  there  is  good 
in  it  its  true  development  and  consecration. 

How  natural  this  method  is.  How  necessarily  any 
one  who  tries  to  do  the  work  of  God  falls  into  God's 
ways  of  doing  it.  Never  are  you  so  near  to  God  as 
when  you  try  to  help  some  miserable  sinner  to  a  better 
life.  And  how  instinctively  you  take  God's  method  then. 
Here  is  a  poor  outcast  with  a  wretched,  wicked,  it  may 


142        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

be  a  hideous  life.  How  will  you  go  to  work  to  lift  that 
wretchedness  ?  Will  you  not  try  to  find  something  in 
all  that  life  that  you  can  speak  to,  something  that  you 
can  cultivate  and  make  to  grow  ?  You  find  perhaps 
some  one  affection.  The  mother's  love  is  left  when 
everything  else  seems  to  have  gone  in  brutishness.  The 
power  to  feel  a  kindness  is  still  there  when  the  power 
to  feel  a  blow  has  long  since  died.  The  sensitiveness 
to  the  cry  of  need  is  still  alive  when  the  ear  can  no 
longer  hear  the  calls  and  threats  of  duty.  Shame  lingers 
where  ambition  has  departed.  To  these  you  speak. 
Over  the  life  of  each  poor  outcast  you  let  your  hands 
wander  till,  in  the  midst  of  all  the  death,  they  find  one 
spot  which,  however  feebly,  trembles  with  life.  You 
can  do  nothing  till  you  have  found  that.  When  you 
have  found  that,  everything  is  possible.  0  my  dear 
friends,  if  you  have  not  learned  it,  this  is  the  lesson  you 
/must  learn.  If  you  are  moved  with  a  vague  desire  to 
/  help  men  be  better  men,  you  must  know  that  you  can 
I  do  it  not  by  belaboring  the  evil  but  by  training  the  good 
\  that  there  is  in  them.  If  you  could  kill  all  a  man's  sins 
you  would  only  make  him  a  less  bad  man.  You  would 
not  make  hira  a  better  man.  That  you  could  make  him 
only  by  developing  his  goodness.  So  imitate  your  Lord. 
When  you  stand  face  to  face  with  a  hungry-eyed  creat- 
ure whom  you  want  to  feed  with  better  life,  be  sure 
that  you  imitate  your  Lord.  Be  sure  that  you  begin  by 
asking  him  "  How  many  loaves  have  you,  my  poor 
friend  ?  What  can  you  give  me  to  begin  with  ?  What 
has  God  done  for  you  already  ?  Show  me  your  best, 
and  we  will  pray  to  God  together  that  as  you  put  it  into 
His  hands  He  will  bless  it  and  multiply  it,  till  youi 


HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ?        143 

whole  life  is  fed  with  the  grace  which  is  all  His  but 
which  He  has  made  yours  by  bidding  it  work  upon  the 
substance  of  what  He  had  given  you  already." 

The  unreality  of  conversion  !  The  inability  of  a  man 
to  realize  that  he  can  be  the  subject  of  such  a  change, 
can  enter  upon  such  a  new  life  as  he  hears  other  men 
describe  !  Surely  you  recognize  that  unreality.  Wliere 
does  it  come  from  ?  Is  it  not  largely  from  the  fact  that 
men  do  not  understand  this  truth  of  the  continuity 
and  economy  of  grace.  This  is  the  fundamental  truth 
about  conversion.  Not  to  sweep  the  old  manhood  off 
and  make  a  new  one  in  its  place ;  but  to  make  a  new 
manhood  out  of  the  old  one,  that  is  what  God's  Spirit  is 
always  trying  to  do.  If  I  could  picture  God's  Spirit 
coming  for  the  first  time  to  a  soul ;  if  I  could  forget  that 
all  our  descriptions  of  the  Spirit  coming  to  the  soul  of 
man  are  figures,  because  God's  Spirit  has  been  with 
every  soul  from  its  first  moment;  if  I  could  picture 
God's  Spirit  coming  for  the  first  time  to  your  soul,  I  can 
imagine  only  one  beginning  of  His  work.  "  How  many 
loaves  have  you  ? "  "  "What  is  there  for  me  to  go  to 
work  on  here  ? "  An  honorable  love  of  truth,  an  un- 
swerving business  faithfulness,  a  keen,  quick  sensitive- 
ness to  the  rights  of  others,  a  tender  pity  which  leaps 
up  at  the  sight  of  suffering.  The  Spirit  finds  these 
there.  These,  and  what  are  they?  They  are  not  re- 
ligion. 0,  no !  surely  they  are  not.  More  and  more 
clear,  I  think,  it  grows  that  they  are  not.  More  and 
more  distinctly  over  our  human  life,  with  all  its  best 
affections,  hangs  the  serene  heaven  of  the  divine  life, 
the  heaven  of  the  love  of  God  into  which  our  human 
affections  must    enter    before    they   become    religious, 


144        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

into  which  they  cannot  enter  till  they  have  been  born 
again.  No !  These  which  the  Spirit  finds  in  you  are 
not  religion.  Never  let  yourself  tliink  that  they  are,  and 
so  depreciate  and  disregard  the  work  which  the  Spirit  has 
to  do  in  you.  They  are  not  religion ;  but  they  are  the 
material  of  the  religious  life.  They  are  the  part  of  your 
nature  in  which  you  may  become  religious.  They  are 
the  stone  in  your  nature  out  of  which  the  temple  may 
be  built.  When  the  temple  is  built  out  of  that  native 
stone,  no  less  wonderful,  indispensable,  and  gracious 
will  appear  the  skill  of  the  Architect,  without  whom  it 
never  could  have  been ;  yet  still  the  temple,  standing 
there  with  its  divine  strength  and  beauty  of  tower  and 
pinnacle,  will  be  real  to  you,  will  be  your  temple  while 
it  is  God's,  because  of  the  nativeness  of  the  stone  from 
which  God  made  it.  The  love  of  truth,  touched  by  God, 
has  been  lifted  into  a  sublime  aspiration  after  Him. 
The  business  faithfulness  has  been  transfigured  into  the 
patient  doing  of  His  will.  The  regard  for  the  rights  of 
others  has  been  exalted  into  a  passionate  desire  that 
every  man  should  have  the  chance  to  do,  and  be  his 
best.  And  pity  for  men's  sorrows  has  been  changed 
into  a  lofty  honor  for  man's  value  as  the  son  of  God  in 
Christ.  How  shall  we  tell  what  has  come  to  pass  ?  Let 
us  take  St.  Peter's  great  words,  "  Until  the  day  dawn 
and  the  day-star  arise  in  your  hearts."  The  coming  of 
God's  Spirit  is  the  rising  of  the  sun.  The  world  is  a 
new  world  when  the  sun  has  arisen.  Light  and  life 
filling  it  everywhere  proclaim  how  new  it  is.  But  the 
sunrise  needs  a  world  already  there  to  shine  upon,  and 
it  is  out  of  the  same  old  mountains  and  valleys  which 
have  been  dreary  in  the  darkness  that  it  makes  its 
miracles  of  light. 


HOW   MANY  LOAVES   HAVE  YE  ?  145 

That  is  conversion.  Would  that  men  might  leam  it, 
so  that  it  need  not  seem  so  unnatural  to  them,  so  that 
it  need  not  seem  so  impossible  for  them.  And  the  same 
is  true  about  every  progress  of  the  Christian  soul  to  the 
higher  and  higher,  even  to  the  highest  Christian  life. 
Continuity  and  economy ;  these  are  the  laws  of  Him 
who  is  leading  us,  the  Captain  of  our  salvation.  He 
always  binds  the  future  to  the  past,  and  He  wastes  noth- 
ing. O,  there  are  some  here  who  want  to  get  away 
from  all  their  past ;  who,  if  they  could,  would  fain  begin 
all  over  again.  Their  life  with  Christ  seems  one  long 
failure.  But  you  must  learn,  you  must  let  God  teach 
you,  that  the  only  way  to  get  rid  of  your  past  is  to  get 
a  future  out  of  it.  God  will  waste  nothing.  There 
is  something  in  your  past,  something,  even  if  it  only  be 
the  sin  of  which  you  have  repented,  which,  if  you  can 
put  into  the  Savior's  hands,  will  be  a  new  life  for  you. 
Doubt  that ;  doubt  that  God  in  all  these  years  has  given 
you  something  through  which  He  may  give  you  vastly 
more  if  you  will  let  Him,  and  what  reasonable  concep- 
tion have  you  left  of  God  ?  I  think  it  is  a  dreadful  thing 
to  hear  a  man  or  woman  say,  "  I  have  been  a  Christian, 
I  have  tried  to  serve  God  for  such  and  such  a  number  of 
years,  and  it  has  been  all  a  mistake."  O,  hoAv  little  they 
know  God,  to  think  it  could  have  been  a  mistake  !  It 
is  as  much  a  wrong  to  the  honor  of  God  to  disown  what 
He  has  done  for  us,  as  to  disown  what  He  has  done  for 
any  other  man ;  and  yet  we  very  often  call  it  humility. 

We  want  to  honor  our  own  present  as  the  material 
for  a  possible  future.  In  order  that  we  may  honor  it  we 
must  know  how  Christ  honors  it.  He  honors  it  for 
what  it  can  produce  in  His  hands.     He  honors  it  as  a 

10 


146        HOW  MANY  LOAVES  HAVE  YE  ? 

seed.  I  think  sometimes  of  how,  if  the  Lord  had 
preached  to  men  who  were  mostly  farmers  instead  of 
shepherds,  He  would  have  made  them  another  parable. 
Instead  of  the  lost  sheep  on  the  mountains,  He  would 
have  told  of  the  lost  seed  on  the  barn  floor.  Instead 
of  the  love  that  sought  the  wanderer  and  brought  it  to 
the  fold,  He  would  have  wonderfully  pictured  the  love 
that  found  the  trampled  grain,  with  aU  its  power  of  life, 
and  buried  it  in  the  rich  ground. 

"  How  many  loaves  have  you  ? "  It  is  the  Lord's 
first  question ;  and  the  hands  of  those  who  really  want 
His  help,  search  their  robes  to  see  what  they  have  hid- 
den there.  One  brings  his  joy ;  another  brings  his 
pain  ;  another  brings  his  helpless  desire ;  another  brings 
his  poor  resolution ;  another  has  nothing  to  bring  ex- 
cept just  his  sorrow  that  he  has  nothing.  It  is  a  poor 
collection  ;  only  seven  loaves,  and  a  few  little  fishes ;  but 
it  is  enough.  His  blessing  falls  upon  them,  and  they 
come  back  to  the  souls  which  gave  them  up  to  Him, 
multiplied  into  the  means  of  healthy,  holy,  happy  life. 

May  God  help  us  all,  every  day  of  our  lives,  to  come 
to  Christ  just  as  we  are,  that  He  may  make  us  more 
and  more  just  what  we  ought  to  be. 


IX. 

THE  NEED  OF  SELF-RESPECT. 

A   THANKSGIVING   SERMON. 

*'  And  He  said  unto  me  :  Son  of  Man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I  will 
speak  unto  thee."  —  Ezek.  ii.  1, 

There  are  many  passages  in  the  Bible  which  describe 
the  servants  of  God,  as  their  Lord's  messages  came  to 
them,  falling  upon  their  faces  on  the  earth,  and  in  that 
attitude  of  most  profound  humiliation  listening  to  what 
God  had  to  say.  Moses,  Joshua,  David,  Daniel,  they 
are  all  seen  at  one  time  or  another  prostrate,  and  signi- 
fying their  readiness  to  receive  what  God  should  tell 
them  by  the  complete  disowning  of  anything  like  worth 
or  dignity  in  themselves.  There  is  a  great  truth  set 
forth  in  all  such  pictures.  It  is  that  only  to  human 
humility  can  God  speak  intelligibly.  Only  when  a 
man  is  humble  can  he  hear  and  understand  the  words  of 
God.  But  in  the  passage  which  I  have  taken  for  my 
text  this  morning,  there  is  another  picture  with  another 
truth.  When  God  was  going  to  give  a  message  to 
Ezekiel,  He  said  to  him,  "  Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy 
feet  and  I  will  speak  unto  thee."  Not  on  his  face  but 
on  his  feet ;  not  in  the  attitude  of  humiliation  but  in  the 
attitude  of  self-respect ;  not  stripped  of  all  strength,  and 
lying  like  a  dead  man  waiting  for  life  to  be  given  him, 
but  strong  in  the  intelligent  consciousness  of  privilege, 


148  THE  NEED   OF  SELF-RESPECT. 

and  standing  alive,  ready  to  co-operate  with  the  living 
God  who  spoke  to  hira ;  so  the  man  now  is  to  receive 
the  word  of  God.  I  hope  that  we  shall  be  able  to 
comprehend  this  idea  largely  and  truly  enough  to  see 
that  it  is  not  contradictory  to  the  other,  but  certainly  it 
is  different  from  it.  When  God  raised  Ezekiel  and  set 
him  on  his  feet  before  He  spoke  to  him,  was  it  not  a 
declaration  of  the  truth  that  man  might  lose  the  words 
of  God  because  of  a  low  and  grovelling  estimate  of 
himself,  as  well  as  because  of  a  conceited  one  ?  The 
best  understanding  of  God  could  come  to  man  only 
when  man  was  upright  and  self-reverent  in  his  privilege 
as  the  child  of  God. 

If  this  be  true,  is  it  not  a  great  truth  ?  Is  it  not  a 
truth  well  worthy  of  being  set  out  in  one  of  these 
graphic  Bible-pictures,  and  one  that  needs  continually 
to  be  preached  ?  The  other  truth  is  often  urged  upon 
us ;  that  if  we  are  proud  we  shall  be  ignorant ;  if  we  do 
not  listen  humbly  we  shall  listen  in  vain  to  hear  the 
Divine  voice  of  which  the  world  is  full.  We  are 
pointed  continually  to  men  on  every  side  who  have 
evidently  no  wisdom  but  their  own,  because  they  have 
never  deeply  felt  that  they  needed  any  other,  and  who, 
therefore,  are  filling  the  land  with  their  foolishness. 
But  this  other  truth  is  not  so  often  preached,  nor,  I 
think,  so  generally  felt;  unless  you  honor  your  life 
you  cannot  get  God's  best  and  fullest  wisdom  ;  unless 
you  stand  upon  your  feet  you  will  not  hear  God  speak 
to  you. 

There  is  much  to-day  of  thoughtless  and  foolish  depre- 
ciation of  man  and  his  condition.  I  want  upon  Thanks- 
giving Day,  in  the   light  of  the  Thanksgiving   truth, 


THE  NEED  OF   SELF-RESPECT.  149 

to  enter  a  quiet,  earnest  and  profoundly  sincere  pro- 
test against  it.  I  want  to  claim  that  it  is  blind  to 
facts.  I  want  to  assert  that  it  is  not  truly  humble.  I 
want  to  denounce  it  as  the  very  spirit  of  ignorance,  shut- 
ting men's  ears  hopelessly  against  the  hearing  of  all  the 
highest  truth.  The  question  comes  to  us  most  press- 
ingly  to-day.  Shall  we,  can  we,  thank  God  for  His 
mercies,  standing  upon  our  feet  and  rejoicing  that  we 
are  men,  thoroughly  grateful  for  the  real  joy  of  life  ? 
Back  of  all  the  special  causes  for  thanksgiving  which 
our  hearts  recognize,  is  there  a  thankfulness  for  that 
on  which  they  all  rest  and  in  which  they  are  sewn  like 
jewels  in  a  cloth  of  gold ;  for  the  mere  fact  of  human 
life,  for  the  mere  privilege  and  honor  of  being  men  and 
women  ?  If  there  is  not  this,  no  gratitude  is  possible ; 
or  only  such  a  gratitude  as  the  poor  wretch  in  his 
dungeon,  for  whom  life  has  been  robbed  of  every  charm, 
feels  to  his  jailor  who  thrusts  through  the  window  to 
him  the  crust  of  bread  and  jug  of  water  which  are  to 
prolong  his  miserable  life.  It  may  seem  like  an  awful 
and  unreasonable  question ;  but  indeed  it  is  not  so. 
The  latest,  and  in  many  quarters  the  favorite,  philosophy 
of  the  day,  —  that  which  boasts  itself  as  being  the  su- 
preme achievement  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  perfect 
flower  of  the  wisdom  of  mankind,  —  is  that  which 
under  its  fantastic  name  of  Pessimism,  declares  deliber- 
ately that  human  life  is  a  woe  and  a  curse,  and  that  the 
"  will  to  live  "  is  the  fiend  which  persecutes  humanity, 
which  must  be  utterly  destroyed  before  man  can  be 
happy.  So  speaks  philosophy ;  and  when  we  talk  with 
unphilosophical  men  who  have  no  theory,  I  think  we  are 
astonished  to  see  how  their  view  of  life  is  essentially  what 


150  THE   NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

this  philosophy  would  give  them.  Either  in  the  soft 
way  or  the  hard  way,  either  in  sentimental  whimper- 
ings or  in  dogged,  rude  defiance,  men  are  saying  that 
life  is  miserable.  Either  in  large  or  little  view,  either 
looking  at  the  great  course  of  history  or  at  the  petty 
course  of  their  own  lives,  men  say  the  world  is  growing 
worse  from  day  to  day.  The  calm  pessimism  of  the 
schools  becomes  the  querulous  discontent  of  the  street 
philosopher,  or  the  bitter  cynicism  of  the  newspaper 
satirist,  or,  what  is  far  more  significant  than  either,  the 
silent  distress  and  bewilderment  of  the  man  who  sees 
no  bright  hope  for  himself  or  fellow-man.  I  am  sure 
you  know  whereof  I  speak.  In  large  circles  of  life  (and 
they  are  just  those  circles  in  which  a  great  many  of  us 
live)  there  is  an  habitual  disparagement  of  human  life, 
its  joys  and  its  prospects.  Man  is  on  his  face.  It 
seems  to  me  that  he  must  hear  God's  voice  calling  him 
to  another  attitude,  or  he  is  hopeless.  "  Son  of  man, 
stand  upon  thy  feet  and  I  will  speak  unto  thee." 

What  shall  we  say  then  of  this  prevalent  depression 
as  to  the  character  and  hopes  of  our  human  life,  which 
is,  I  tliink,  one  of  the  symptoms  of  our  time  ?  Some- 
times it  is  very  sweeping  and  talks  despairingly  of  man 
in  general.  Sometimes  it  is  special  and  merely  believes 
that  our  own  age  or  our  own  land  is  given  up  to  moral 
corruption  and  decay.  As  to  its  general  character,  I 
think  it  may  be  said  that  it  comes  from  an  inspection 
of  human  life  which  is  neither  the  shallowest  nor  the 
deepest.  It  has  got  below  the  surface  facts  and  first 
appearances  of  things,  but  it  has  not  got  down  to  their 
essential  and  central  truth.  The  surface  of  the  earth  is 
warm  with  the  direct  rays  of  the  sun.     The  centre  of 


THE  NEED   OF  SELF-RESPECT.  151 

the  earth,  perhaps,  is  warm  with  its  own  essential  and 
quenchless  fire.  But  between  the  two,  after  you  get 
below  the  warm  surface,  and  before  you  approach  the 
warm  heart  of  the  globe,  it  is  all  cold  and  damp  and 
dark  and  dreary.  And  so  there  is  the  surface  sight  of 
life,  which  is  bright  and  enthusiastic.  There  is  the 
sight  of  life  which  is  deeper  than  this,  which  is  sad  and 
puzzled.  There  is  the  deepest  sight  of  all,  which  is 
bright  again  with  a  truer  light,  and  enthusiastic  again 
with  a  soberer  but  a  more  genuine  happiness.  The 
character  of  the  first  sight,  the  most  simple  and  super- 
ficial, very  few  people  will  be  inclined  to  dispute.  There 
are  not  many  misanthropes  who  will  deny  that  the  first 
aspect  of  things  which  meets  the  eye  of  man  is  tempting 
and  exhilarating.  The  external  world  is  too  manifestly 
beautiful ;  the  sun  is  too  bright,  the  fields  too  green,  the 
sea  too  blue,  the  breeze  too  fresh,  the  luxuries  of  taste 
and  sound  and  smell  too  manifold  and  sweet ;  the  hu- 
man frame  is  strung  too  thickly  with  the  faculties  ot 
pleasure ;  the  first  and  universal  relationships  of  men, 
friendship  and  childhood  and  fatherhood,  are  too  spon- 
taneous sources  of  delight  for  any  reasonable  man  to 
say  that  the  first  and  simplest  aspect  of  human  life  is 
not  a  happy  thing.  The  charm  may  be  only  apparent, 
but  at  least  there  is  an  apparent  charm.  These  men 
may  be  very  foolish  to  find  such  joy  in  life,  but  cer- 
tainly the  men  whom  we  see  do  find  joy  in  it.  To  the 
child  it  is  all  joyous.  Sometimes  thfe  light  foot  breaks 
through  the  thin  crust  for  a  moment,  but  the  spring  of 
the  young  walker  sets  him  the  next  instant  on  the 
crust  again,  with  only  sufficient  sense  of  danger  to  ex-  | 
hilarate,  not  to  depress.     And  many  men  who  never 


152  THE   NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

cease  to  be  children  keep  the  first  sight  of  life  all 
through,  and  never  see  below  its  bright  surface  nor  hear 
another  sound  behind  the  music  of  its  most  palpable 
delights.  So  that  the  first  aspect  of  life  makes  the 
bright  optimist  wliich  every  live  and  healthy  boy  ought 
to  be  and  is.  But  this  is  only  on  the  surface,  as  most 
men  soon  find  out.  It  is  real  but  superficial.  By  and 
by  the  exceptions  and  the  contradictions  and  the  limi- 
tations begin  to  show  themselves.  This  first  happiness 
of  life  is  spotted  with  unhappiness ;  and  it  is  not  enough, 
even  if  it  were  unspotted,  to  satisfy  the  man  who  tries 
to  find  his  satisfaction  in  it.  Then  comes  the  danger  of 
misanthropy.  There,  just  below  the  surface,  lie  the 
abject  or  defiant  misanthropes ;  the  men  who  count  the 
sick  people  till  they  say  there  is  no  health,  who  count 
the  dull  days  till  they  say  there  is  no  sunshine,  who 
count  the  failures  till  they  say  there  is  no  success,  who 
count  the  fiuuds  till  they  declare  there  is  no  honesty, 
and  the  fools  till  they  laugh  at  the  idea  of  wisdom. 
You  see  they  have  crawled  down  out  of  the  sunlight. 
They  have  left  the  surface  and  its  simple  presumptions 
to  burrow  just  under  them  among  the  exceptions  and 
contradictions.  They  keep  the  same  idea  of  what  the 
purpose  of  life  is  and  what  sort  of  happiness  it  ought  to 
have ;  only,  while  the  boy  in  his  optimism  cried,  as  he 
saw  the  bird  flash  up  in  the  sunlight,  "  Here  it  is,"  the 
middle-aged  pessimist  creeps  with  the  mole  underground 
and  says,  "It  is  not  anywhere."  Now  what  comes 
deeper  still  ?  What  is  there  more  profound  than  the 
lamentations  over  the  sin  and  miseiy  of  life,  which  have 
succeeded  to  the  first  enthusiastic  praise  of  everything, 
which  came  first  of  all  ?     What  is  the  next  step  if  a 


THE  NEED  OF  SELF-RESPECT,  153 

man  can  take  it  ?  I  answer,  certainly  a  new  idea  of 
what  life  is  for,  of  what  happiness  a  man  really  needs ; 
that  is  what  must  come.  The  notion  of  education  and 
of  character  as  the  end  of  life,  of  something  which  a  man 
is  to  be  made,  and  by  the  power  to  make  which  all  of 
life's  experiences  are  to  be  judged,  that  opens  to  a  man ; 
and  as  he  passes  into  that  he  finds  the  heat  beginning 
to  glow  once  more  around  him.  He  is  coming  in  to 
the  warm  centre  of  the  world.  There  come  forth  adap- 
tations for  the  higher  work  in  things  which  have  seemed 
wholly  unfitted  to  produce  the  lower.  Things  wliich 
never  could  have  made  a  man  happy,  develop  a  power 
to  make  him  strong.  Strength  and  not  happiness,  or 
rather  only  that  happiness  which  comes  by  strength,  is 
recognized  as  the  end  of  human  living.  And  with  that 
test  and  standard  the  lost  order  and  beauty  reappear. 
The  world  is  man's  servant  and  friend  ;  and  man,  full  of 
the  deeper  self-respect,  is  ready  to  hear  deeper  and 
diviner  messages  of  God. 

This  is  the  order.  This  is  the  way  in  which  w^e  pass 
to  deeper  knowledge,  which  is  always  tending  to  the 
happiest  knowledge  of  our  own  life.  First,  life  is  a 
success  because  the  skies  are  bright  and  the  whole  world 
is  beautiful.  Then  life  is  a  failure  because  every  joy  is 
in  danger  of  disappointment,  and  every  confidence  may 
prove  untrue.  Then  life  is  a  success  again  because 
through  disappointment  and  deceit  it  still  has  power  to 
make  a  man  pure  and  strong.  He  who  has  delighted  in 
the  outside  pleasures  and  then  bowed  down  in  misery 
because  they  disappeared,  rises  up  at  last  and  stands 
upon  his  feet  when  he  discovers  that  God  has  a  far 
deeper  purpose  about  him  than  to  keep  him  gay  and 


154  THE  NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

cheerful,  and  that  is  to  make  him  good ;  and  with  that 
deepest  intention  no  accidents  can  interfere ;  with  that 
discovery  all  his  despair  disappears,  and  a  self-respect, 
which  is  full  of  hope  and  ready  for  intelligence,  comes 
in  its  place. 

This  is  the  way  in  which  a  man's  despair  or  contempt 
about  himself  is  thoroughly  undermined,  by  his  get- 
tinsr  a  truer  view  of  what  the  world  and  all  its  treat- 
ments  of  man's  life  are  for.  But  now,  I  think,  another 
fact  comes  in.  Many  men  own  the  possibility  of  good 
which  is  open  to  them,  while  still  they  are  despairing 
or  cynical  about  the  world  itself,  about  the  course  of 
human  life  in  general.  There  are  many  good  people,  I 
believe,  who  devoutly  recognize  the  chance  of  character, 
of  spiritual  culture,  which  is  offered  to  them  by  living 
in  the  midst  of  a  world  of  sin  and  sorrow;  but  the 
sinful  and  sorrowful  world  itself  seems  to  them  despe- 
rate. They  may  be  purified,  but  the  fire  that  purifies 
them  is  the  burning  up  of  a  miserable  world.  This  is 
the  strange  hopelessness  about  the  world,  joined  to  a 
strong  hope  for  themselves,  which  we  see  in  many  good 
religious  people.  It  is  what  really  lies  at  the  heart  of 
all  the  exclusive  and  seemingly  selfish  systems  of  re- 
ligion, what  makes  it  possible  for  good  men  to  believe 
in  election.  In  their  own  hearts  they  recognize  indu- 
bitably that  God  is  saving  them,  while  the  aspect  of  the 
world  around  them  seems  to  show  them  that  the  world 
is  going  to  perdition.  That  is  a  common  enough  condi- 
tion of  mind ;  but  I  think  it  may  be  surely  said  that 
it  is  not  a  good,  nor  can  it  be  a  permanent,  condition. 
God  has  mercifully  made  us  so  that  no  man  can  con- 
stantly and  purely  believe  in  any  great  privilege  for 


THE  NEED   OF   SELP-RESPECT.  155 

himself  unless  he  believes  in  at  least  the  possibility  of 
the  same  privilege  for  other  men.  A  man's  hold  on  his 
own  privilege  either  disappears  or  grows  impure  the 
moment  that  he  gives  the  rest  of  the  world  up  in  de- 
spair. Under  this  principle,  no  man  who  believes  that' 
the  world  at  large  is  growing  hopelessly  worse,  can 
keep  a  lively  and  etiectual  hope  that  he  himself  is  grow- 
ing better.  Indeed  this  is  the  danger  of  that  current 
habit  of  depreciating  man,  and  especially  of  depreciating 
our  own  times  and  surroundings,  which  is  very  common 
among  us.  It  is  not  merely  a  speculative  opinion.  It 
is  an  influence  which  must  reach  a  man's  character.  A 
man  can  have  no  high  respect  for  himself  unless  he  has 
a  high  respect  for  his  human  kind.  He  can  have  no 
strong  hope  for  himself  unless  he  has  a  strong  hope  for 
his  human  kind.  And  so,  whatever  be  his  pure  tastes 
and  lofty  principles,  one  trembles  for  any  man  whom  he 
hears  hopelessly  decrying  human  life  in  general,  or  the 
special  condition  of  his  own  time. 

It  is  time,  perhaps,  that  we  looked  a  little  more 
closely  at  this,  which  is  no  doubt  a  notable  and  alarm- 
ing characteristic  of  our  time ;  the  number  of  intelli- 
gent men  who  think  and  talk  despairingly  of  human 
nature  and  of  human  life.  You  meet  them  everywhere. 
Their  books  are  on  your  tables.  Their  talk  is  in  your 
ears  at  every  corner  of  the  streets.  Where  has  this  fact, 
then,  come  from  if  it  is,  as  we  believe,  the  growingly 
prominent  characteristic  of  our  generation  ?  It  is  not 
hard  to  point  out  some  of  its  sources.  Sometimes,  with 
some  men,  it  is  a  deliberate  philosophy.  Some  of  our 
brightest  men  have,  as  I  said,  really  reasoned  about  the 
world,  and  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  bad 


156  THE   NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

and  not  good,  and  that  it  is  growing  worse  and  not 
better.  It  is  the  issue  of  all  the  fatalistic  philosophies, 
and  we  all  know  how  the  strong  interest  of  men  in  the 
working  of  second  causes,  and  in  the  uniformity  of  law, 
has  aroused  a  tendency  to  fatalism  in  almost  all  de- 
partments of  thinking.  Make  all  life  a  machine,  and 
the  individual  is  lost ;  with  individual  life,  goes  respon- 
sibility ;  with  responsibility,  go  hope  and  chance.  This 
is  the  way  in  which  the  philosophical  pessimism  of  our 
time  is  made.  It  begins  by  the  denial  of  the  individual 
and  his  free  will ;  and  then,  with  the  only  power  capable 
of  moral  goodness  taken  out,  the  universe  is  left  un- 
moral, and  an  unmoral  universe  becomes  immoral.  Its 
salt  is  gone  and  its  corruption  comes. 

But  the  number  of  speculative  pessimists  is  small ; 
the  number  of  believers  in  the  badness  of  the  world  is 
larce.  Where  do  the  rest  of  them  come  from  ?  In 
large  part,  I  believe,  from  another  characteristic  of  our 
time,  from  the  strong  feeling  of  interest  in,  and  respon- 
sibility for,  the  world's  condition,  which  comes  from  the 
increased  activity  of  mind  and  conscience,  and  which 
begets  often  narrowness  of  view  about  the  world's  con- 
dition.  A  thousand  men  to-day  care  whether  the  state 
is  pure,  for  one  who  cared  in  the  last  century.  A  thou- 
sand eyes  are  anxiously  watching  the  church,  for  one 
that  looked  to  see  whether  she  did  her  work  a  hundred 
years  ago.  A  thousand  hearts  sink  at  a  catastrophe  in 
the  purity  of  social  life,  where  once  only  one  felt  the 
disgrace.  Out  of  all  this  watchfulness  has  come  a  sen- 
sitiveness and  a  narrowness.  Because  our  own  age  has 
its  vices  which  distress  us,  we  forget  the  vices  of  other 
times,  and  we  let  ourselves  judge  the  world  by  that  bit 


THE  NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT.  157 

of  the  world  which  is  just  under  our  own  eyes.  When 
one  thing  is  being  done  here  in  New  England,  just  the 
opposite  thing  may  be  coming  to  pass  on  the  Ganges  or 
the  Nile.  Almost  every  day  you  hear  men  assuming 
that,  because  America  happens  to  have  grown  from  a 
very  poor  country  to  a  very  rich  one  within  the  last 
century,  and  has  developed,  of  course,  the  vices  that  be- 
long to  wealth,  therefore  the  world  is  worse  to-day  than 
it  was  a  century  ago.  It  is  vastly  unreasonable,  but  it 
is  very  natural  for  a  conscientious  American  to  think  so. 
Only  when  he  lifts  up  his  eyes  and  finds  it  simply  im- 
possible to  let  them  fall  on  any  century  in  all  the  world's 
history  which  was  better  than  this ;  any  century  when 
government  was  purer,  thought  or  action  freer,  society 
sweeter,  the  word  of  man  more  sacred  than  it  is  to-day, 
only  then  does  he  come  back  and  recognize  how  he  has 
been  allowing  the  nearness  and  pressingness  of  his  own 
circumstances  to  delude  him. 

But  yet,  again,  this  time  of  ours,  these  men  of  ours, 
are  marked  by  a  singular  depth  of  personal  experience. 
The  personal  emotions,  the  anxieties  with  regard  to  per- 
sonal conditions,  are  very  intense.  It  is  a  time  of  much 
morbidness,  and  so  I  think  that  the  danger  under  which 
men  always  labor,  of  letting  the  universe  take  the  color 
of  the  windows  of  their  own  life  through  which  they  look 
at  it,  was  never  so  dangerous  as  to-day.  More  men  to- 
day think  the  world  is  wretched  because  they  are  sad 
and  bewildered,  than  would  have  transferred  their  own 
conditions  to  the  outside  universe  in  less  introspective 
and  self-conscious  times.  The  simplest  men  in  the 
simplest  ages,  when  they  were  in  sorrow,  opened  their 
windows  inward  to  let  the  world's  sunlight  in.     The 


158  THE  NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

elaborate  and  subtle  men  in  the  elaborate  and  subtle 
ages,  in  their  sorrow,  open  their  windows  outward  and 
darken  the  bright  world  with  their  darkness.  And 
among  such  men,  in  such  an  age,  we  live. 

And  one  point  more.  When  all  these  causes,  in  a 
time  like  ours,  have  set  a  few  earnest,  serious,  sad  men 
to  the  hard  task  of  depreciating  human  life,  then  it  be- 
comes the  fashion,  and  all  the  light,  flippant  tongues 
catch  up  their  cry  and  repeat  it.  A  few  strong  men  go 
wrapt  in  melancholy  because  they  so  intensely  feel  the 
evil  of  the  world,  and  straightway  every  weakling  who 
wants  to  be  thought  wise  must  twist  his  cloak  about  his 
head  too,  and  go  stalking  tragically  among  his  fellow- 
men,  —  blind  in  his  mock  misery,  stumbling  over  them 
and  making  them  stumble  over  him.  This  was  the 
Byronism  of  the  generation  of  our  fathers,  and  this  is 
a  large  part  of  the  pessimism  of  ours.  Sometimes  it 
scowls  and  frowns  and  scolds ;  sometimes  it  smiles  and 
bows  as  it  declares  that  religion  and  politics  and  social 
life  and  personal  character  are  hurrying  to  ruin  ;  but  it 
is  an  affectation  and  a  fashion,  and  is  to  be  discriminated 
carefully,  and  set  aside  in  contempt,  when  we  are  trying 
to  estimate  what  there  is  really  respectable  and  signifi- 
cant in  the  present  defamation  of  humanity. 

Such  is  a  statement  of  some  of  the  reasons,  the  prin- 
cipal ones  I  think,  why  men  have  come  to  talk  of  their 
race  and  its  hopes  as  we  very  often  hear  them  talk 
to-day.  They  are  connected,  as  you  see,  with  much 
that  is  noblest  in  our  age.  All  together  they  produce 
this  condition  of  distrust  and  fear  and  wonder  about 
what  is  coming,  with  a  certain  preference  for  believing 
that  something  very  bad  is  coming,  with  which  we  are 


THE  NEED   OF  SELF-RESPECT.  159 

all  of  US  familiar.  Men  are  off  their  feet,  as  it  were. 
They  are  demoralized.  There  is  less  readiness  to  assert 
the  essential  nobleness  and  lofty  destiny  of  man.  A 
state  of  things  like  this  seems  to  me  to  be  significant  as 
to  where  we  stand  in  the  world's  moral  history.  We 
have  passed  out  of  the  first  light-heartedness  of  youth. 
We  are  preparing,  by  disappointment  and  bewilderment, 
for  the  more  serious  and  earnest  satisfactions  of  middle 
life.  If  you  recall  what  I  said  about  the  degrees  or 
stages  in  men's  conception  of  the  world's  character  and 
prospects,  you  can  apply  it  now  to  what  I  have  just  been 
saying.  The  light  and  airy  optimism  which  believed  that 
everything  was  right  because  the  sun  shone  in  the  sky, 
is  past  for  thoughtful  mortals.  You  cannot  persuade  men 
to-day  that  the  world  is  good  because  there  are  many 
pleasant  things  in  it.  They  probably  never  will  believe 
that  in  the  old  easy  way  again.  Once  having  come  to  see 
that  a  pleasant  world  which  is  all  full  of  sin  and  pain, 
is  all  the  more  dreadful  because  of  its  outside  pleasant- 
ness, there  is  no  return  to  the  first  easy  satisfaction. 
The  only  two  things  that  are  still  open  to  man  are  these  : 
a  blank  despair,  which  gives  itself  up  to  inevitable  de- 
terioration ;  or  a  new  thought  of  the  world  as  a  place  of 
moral  training  where  happiness  or  unhappiness  are  ac- 
cidents, but  where,  by  both  happiness  and  unhappiness, 
men  and  nations  must  be  made  and  can  be  made  just 
and  pure  and  good. 

Which  of  these  two  are  we  bound  for  ?  Surely  the 
second,  not  the  first.  But  to  that  second  we  can  come 
only  as  we  keep,  in  all  our  bewilderment  over  the 
world's  misery  and  sin,  the  sense,  the  certainty  of  God. 
There  is  the  point  of  all.     If  a  man  dwells  upon  the 


160  THE  NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

misery  of  human  life  and  does  not  believe  in  God,  he  is 
dragged  down  among  the  brutes.  If  a  man  believes  in 
the  misery  of  human  life  and  does  believe  in  God,  he  is 
carried  up  to  higher  notions  of  God's  government,  which 
have  loftier  purposes  than  mere  happiness  or  pain.  The 
one  great  question  about  all  the  kind  of  temper  of  which 
I  have  spoken  is  whether  it  still  believes  in  God.  If  it 
does,  it  must  come  out  in  light  through  whatever  dark- 
ness it  may  have  first  to  pass.  If  it  does  not,  however 
wise  it  grows,  it  certainly  must  end  in  folly  and  despair. 
Whether  our  philosophy  is  theistic  or  atheistic ;  whether 
you,  as  you  look  at  the  snarl  of  life  with  all  its  misery 
and  sin,  know  for  a  surety  that  God  is  within  it  all ; 
these  are  the  questions,  the  answer  to  which  decides 
whether  our  philosophy  and  our  observation  of  life  are 
on  their  face  or  on  their  feet,  are  full  of  the  curse  of 
despair  or  full  of  the  blessing  of  hope. 

For  all  belief  in  God  is,  must  be,  belief  in  ultimate 
good.  No  view  of  the  universe  can  be  despairing  which 
keeps  Him  still  in  sight.  "  Ah,"  but  you  say,  "  do  we 
not  all  believe  in  God  ?  Is  there  one  of  us  that  denies 
His  existence  ? "  Probably  not ;  only  remember  that 
^there  is  an  atheism  which  still  repeats  the  creed.  There 
is  a  belief  in  God  which  does  not  bring  Him,  nay,  rather 
say  which  does  not  let  Him  come,  into  close  contact  with 
our  daily  life.  The  very  reverence  with  which  we  honor 
I  God  may  make  us  shut  Hira  out  from  the  hard  tasks  and 
puzzling  problems  with  which  we  have  to  do.  Many  of 
\us  who  call  ourselves  theists  are  like  the  savages  who, 
in  the  desire  to  honor  the  wonderful  sun-dial  which  had 
been  given  them,  built  a  roof  over  it.  Break  down  the 
roof ;  let  God  in  on  your  life.     And  then,  however  your 


THE  NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT.  161 

first  light  optimism  may  be  broken  up,  and  the  evil 
of  the  world  may  be  made  known  to  you,  you  never  can 
be  crushed  by  it.  You  will  stand  strong  on  your  feet 
and  hear  God  when  He  comes  to  teach  you  the  lessons 
of  the  higher,  soberer,  spiritual  optimism  to  which  they 
come  who  are  able  to  believe  that  all  things  work  to- 
gether for  good  to  the  man  or  the  people  that  serve 
Him. 

That  was  the  optimism  of  Jesus.  There  was  no  blind- 
ness in  His  eyes,  no  foolish  indiscriminate  praise  of 
humanity  upon  His  lips.  He  saw  the  sin  of  that  first 
century  and  of  Jerusalem  a  thousand  times  more  keenly 
than  you  see  the  sins  of  this  nineteenth  century  and  of 
America.  But  He  believed  in  God.  Therefore  He  saw 
beyond  the  sin,  salvation.  He  never  upbraided  the  sin 
except  to  save  men  from  it.  He  never  beat  the  chains 
except  to  set  the  captive  free  ;  never,  as  our  cynics  do, 
for  the  mere  pleasure  of  their  clanking.  "  Not  to  con- 
demn the  world,  but  to  save  the  world,"  was  His  story 
of  His  mission.  And  at  His  cross  the  shame  and  hope 
of  humankind  joined  hands. 

O  that  the  truth  of  our  Thanksgiving  Day  might  be 
His  truth  ;  the  truth  that  all  the  sin  we  see,  all  the  woe 
that  is  around  us,  are  pledges  dark  and  dreadful,  but  still 
certain  pledges,  of  man's  possible  higher  life.  May  I 
not  beg  you  now  to  think  whether  you  have  been  doing 
wholly  right  about  the  matter  of  which  I  have  spoken 
to  you  to-day  ?  If  you  have  been  dwelling  solely  on  the 
evil  that  is  in  man,  or  on  the  special  evil  which  you 
think  is  in  your  church,  your  nation,  or  your  age,  see 
whether  that  habit  has  not  blinded  your  intelligence  and 
weakened  your  strength.     It  has  cast  you  down  upon 


162  THE   NEED   OF   SELF-RESPECT. 

your  face.  Stand  up,  on  this  Thanksgiving  Day,  stand 
up  upon  your  feet !  Believe  in  man !  Soberly  and  with 
clear  eyes  believe  in  your  own  time  and  place.  There 
is  not,  and  there  has  never  been,  a  better  time  or  a  better 
place  to  live  in.  Only  with  this  belief  can  you  believe 
in  hope  and  believe  in  work.  Only  to  a  self-respect 
which  stands  erect  in  conscious  privilege,  erect  for  ex- 
pected duty,  can  God  speak  His  great  and  blessed 
messages  and  be  completely  understood. 


THE  HEROISM  OF  FOREIGN  MISSIONS. 

"  As  they  ministered  to  the  Lord  and  fasted,  the  Holy  Ghost  said. 
Separate  me  Barnabas  and  Saul  for  the  work  whereuuto  I  have 
called  them.  And  when  they  had  fasted  and  prayed  and  laid  their 
hands  on  them,  they  sent  them  away." — Acts  xiii.  2,  3. 

The  work  was  foreign  missions.  The  disciples  in 
Judea  were  sending  out  two  of  their  number  to  preach 
the  gospel  in  other  parts  of  Asia  and,  by  and  by,  in 
Europe.  And  therefore  these  words  belong  to  us  to-day, 
upon  this  one  Sunday  in  the  year  when  we  give  our 
especial  thoughts  to  the  foreign  missionary  work.  This 
Sunday  always  comes  back  to  us  with  the  same  feeling 
and  color.  It  enters  in  among  our  common  Sundays 
with  a  larger  power  than  belongs  to  them.  It  seems  as 
if  the  arms  of  Christ  were  stretched  out  a  little  more 
widely.  As  sometimes  when  our  Lord  was  preaching 
in  the  temple,  those  who  stood  nearest  to  Him  and 
caught  His  words  the  freshest  from  His  lips,  those  to 
whom  His  words  had  been  long  familiar,  must  have 
seen  Him  lift  up  His  eyes  and  look  across  their  heads 
to  the  multitude  beyond  who  stood  upon  the  outskirts 
of  the  crowd ;  and  as,  while  they  watched  Him  finding 
out  and  speaking  to  those  strangers,  their  own  thoughts 
of  Him  must  have  enlarged ;  as,  perhaps  at  first  sur- 
prised and  jealous,  they  must  have  come  to  understand 
Him  more  and  love  Him  better  for  this  new  sight  of 


164  THE   HEROISM  OF  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

His  love  for  all  men,  —  so  it  is  with  us  to-day.  Indeed 
there  is  no  feeling  which  the  Jew  had  when  he  found 
that  what  had  been  his  religion  was  going  to  become  the 
possession  of  the  world,  which  doe?  not  repeat  itself 
now  in  men's  minds  when  they  hear  their  gospel  de- 
manding of  them  to  send  it  to  the  heathen.  It  must 
have  been  a  surprise  and  bewilderment  at  first  to  find 
that  they  were  not  the  final  objects  of  God's  care,  but 
only  the  medium  through  which  the  light  was  to  shine 
that  it  might  reach  other  men.  I  can  conceive  that 
Joseph  and  Mary  may  have  wondered  why  those  Gen- 
tiles should  have  come  out  of  the  East  to  worship  their 
Messiah.  But  very  soon  the  enlargement  of  their  faith 
to  be  the  world's  heritage  proved  its  power  by  making 
their  faith  a  far  holier  thing  for  them  than  it  could  have 
been  if  it  had  remained  wholly  their  own.  Christ  was 
more  thoroughly  theirs  when  through  them  He  had 
been  manifested  to  the  Gentiles.  And  so  always  the 
enlargement  of  the  faith  brings  the  endearment  of  the 
faith,  and  to  give  the  Savior  to  others  makes  Him  more 
thoroughly  our  own. 

With  this  thought  let  me  speak  to  you  to-day.  Let 
me  plead  for  the  foreign  missionary  idea  as  the  neces- 
sary completion  of  the  Christian  life.  It  is  the  apex  to 
which  all  the  lines  of  the  pyramid  lead  up.  The  Chris- 
tian life  without  it  is  a  mangled  and  imperfect  thing. 
The  glory  and  the  heroism  of  Christianity  lies  in  its 
missionary  life.  This  is  the  subject  of  which  I  wish  to 
speak  to  you  this  morning. 

The  event  which  is  recorded  in  the  text,  the  departure 
of  the  disciples  on  their  first  missionary  journey,  was  a 
distinct  epoch  in  the  history  of  Christianity.     There  had 


THE  HEROISM   OF  FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  165 

been  some  anticipations  of  it.  The  gospel  had  been 
preached  to  the  Samaritans.  Philip  had  baptized  the 
Ethiopian.  Peter  had  carried  his  message  to  the  Roman 
centurion.  But  now  for  the  first  time  a  distinct,  de- 
liberate, irrevocable  step  was  taken,  and  two  disciples 
turned  their  back  upon  the  home  of  Judaism,  which 
had  been  thus  far  the  home  of  Christianity,  and  went 
forth  with  the  world  before  them.  They  went  indeed 
in  the  first  place  to  the  Jews  who  lived  in  foreign  lands ; 
but  when  they  went  away  from  Judea  they  started  on  a 
work  from  which  there  was  no  turning  back  and  which 
could  not  be  limited.  Before  they  had  been  many  weeks 
upon  their  journey,  it  had  become  distinctly  a  mission  to 
the  Gentiles.  And  now,  from  the  time  when  Paul  and 
Barnabas  went  out  upon  this  mission,  the  body  of  the 
disciples  divides  itself  into  two  parts.  There  are  the 
disciples  who  stay  at  home  and  manage  affairs  in  Jeru- 
salem, and  there  are  the  disciples  who  go  abroad  to  tell 
the  story  of  the  cross.  Peter  and  James  are  in  Jerusa- 
lem. Paul  and  Barnabas  and  Luke  go  wandering  to 
Ephesus  and  Athens  and  Corinth.  And,  as  we  read  our 
Bibles,  gradually  the  history  detaches  itself  from  the 
Holy  City.  The  interest  of  Christianity  does  not  linger 
with  the  wise  and  faithful  souls  who  stay  at  home. 
Peter  and  James  pass  out  of  our  thought.  It  is  Paul, 
with  his  fiery  zeal  and  eager  tongue,  restless  to  find 
some  new  ears  into  which  to  pour  the  story  of  his  Mas- 
ter; it  is  he  in  whom  the  interest  of  Christianity  is 
concentrated.  He  evidently  represents  its  spirit.  Its 
glory  and  its  heroism  are  in  him.  The  other  disciples 
seem  to  feel  this.  They  recognize  that  it  is  coming. 
They  are  almost  like  John  the  Baptist  when  he  beheld 


166  THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

Jesus.  As  they  come  down  to  the  ship  to  see  their 
companions  embark,  as  they  fast  and  pray  and  lay  their 
hands  on  them  and  send  them  away,  there  is  a  solemnity 
about  it  all  which  is  like  the  giving  up  of  the  most  pre- 
cious privilege  of  their  work,  its  flower  and  crown,  to 
these  its  missionaries ;  and  they  turn  back  to  their  ad- 
ministrative work  at  home  as  to  a  humbler  and  less 
heroic  task. 

The  relation  of  the  disciples  who  stayed  at  home  to 
the  disciples  who  went  abroad  to  preach  is  the  perpetual 
relation  of  the  home  pastor  to  the  foreign  missionary. 
The  work  of  the  two  is  not  essentially  different.  It  is 
essentially  the  same.  Both  have  the  same  gospel  to 
proclaim.  But  the  color  of  their  lives  is  different.  Paul 
is  heroic.  James  is  unheroic,  or  is  far  less  heroic.  I  think 
as  we  go  on  we  shall  see  that  those  words  have  very 
clear  meanings.  They  are  not  vague.  But  even  before 
we  have  defined  them  carefully  they  express  a  feeling 
with  which  the  missionary  and  the  pastor  impress  us. 
Heroism  is  in  the  very  thought  of  missions.  Patient  de- 
votedness,  but  nothing  heroic,  is  associated  with  the  min- 
istry of  him  who  works  for  the  building  up  of  Christian 
lives  where  Christianity  already  is  the  established  faith. 

I  am  sure  that  I  speak  for  a  very  great  many  of  my 
brethren  in  the  home  ministry  when  I  say  that  we  feel 
this  continually.  "  Sent  to  tell  men  of  Christ,"  —  that 
is  our  commission.  And  men  certainly  need  to  be  told 
of  Christ  over  and  over  again.  Those  who  have  known 
Him  longest  need  to  hear  His  name  again  and  again  in 
their  temptations,  their  troubles,  their  joys.  We  need 
to  tell  men  of  Him  all  their  lives,  until  we  whisper 
His  familiar  name  into  their  ears  just  growing  dull  in 


THE  HEROISM   OF   FOKEIGN   MISSIONS.  167 

death.  I  rejoice  to  tell  you  of  Him  always,  those  of  you 
who  have  heard  of  Him  most  and  longest ;  but  you  can 
imagine,  I  am  sure,  how,  standing  here  in  your  presence, 
and  letting  my  thought  wander  off  to  a  foreign  land 
where  some  missionary  is  standing  face  to  face  with 
people  who  never  heard  of  Christ  before,  I  feel  that  that 
man  is  "  telling  men  of  Christ "  in  a  realler,  directer  way 
than  I  am.  He  is  coming  nearer  to  the  heart,  the  true 
idea  and  meaning  of  the  work  we  both  are  doing,  than  I 
am.  We  are  like  soldiers  holding  the  fortress.  He  is 
the  soldier  who  makes  the  sally  and  really  does  the 
fighting.  I  know  the  answer.  I  know  what  some  of 
you  are  saying  in  your  hearts  whenever  we  talk  together 
about  foreign  missions.  "There  are  heathen  here  in 
Boston,"  you  declare ;  "  heathen  enough  here  in  Amer- 
ica. Let  us  convert  them  first,  before  we  go  to  China." 
That  plea  we  all  know,  and  I  think  it  sounds  more 
cheap  and  more  shameful  every  year.  What  can  be 
more  shameful  than  to  make  the  imperfection  of  our 
Christianity  at  home  an  excuse  for  not  doing  our  work 
abroad  ?  It  is  as  shameless  as  it  is  shameful.  It  pleads 
for  exemption  and  indulgence  on  the  ground  of  its  own 
neglect  and  sin.  It  is  like  a  murderer  of  his  father  ask- 
ing the  judge  to  have  pity  on  his  orphanhood.  Even 
the  men  who  make  such  a  plea  feel,  I  think,  how  un- 
heroic  it  is.  The  minister  who  does  what  they  bid  him 
do  feels  his  task  of  preaching  to  such  men  perhaps  all 
the  more  necessary  but  certainly  all  the  less  heroic,  as 
he  sees  how  utterly  they  have  failed  to  feel  the  very 
nature  of  the  gospel  which  he  preaches  to  them. 

But  I  must  come  closer  to  our  subject.    "  The  heroism 
of  Christianity  lies  in  its  missionary  life."     And  let  us 


168  THE   HEROISM  OF  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

start  with  this.  Every  great  interest  and  work  of  men 
has  its  higher  and  its  lower,  its  heroic  and  its  unheroic 
phases.  Take  public  life  for  instance.  Two  servants  of 
the  people  work  together  in  the  same  office,  and  both 
alike  are  faithful,  both  are  honest.  Both  try  to  do  their 
duty.  But  one  thinks  of  the  state  and  of  that  interest  of 
the  state  for  which  he  labors,  as  serving  him.  The  other 
thinks  of  himself  as  serving  the  state.  There  is  the  dif- 
ference. To  one  the  currents  of  life  flow  inward  towards 
the  centre,  which  is  his  person.  To  the  other  the  cur- 
rents of  life  flow  outward  towards  the  interests  for  which 
he  lives.  So  it  is  with  every  man's  profession.  Of  two 
men  who  are  practising  law,  one  dwells  upon  the  idea 
of  the  law  and  gives  himself  to  its  development.  The 
other  dwells  upon  the  idea  of  himself  and  considers  that 
the  law  is  given  to  him  for  his  support.  Of  two  doctors, 
one  makes  medicine  his  servant  to  build  up  his  fame  oi 
fortune ;  the  other  makes  himself  the  servant  of  medi- 
cine, to  give  what  strength  there  is  in  him  to  her  develop- 
ment and  application.  In  every  one  of  your  professions 
there  are  both  kinds  of  workers.  There  are  the  men 
who  are  given  to  their  work,  and  the  men  who  consider 
that  their  work  is  given  to  them.  Their  methods  may 
be  just  alike.  They  may  study  in  the  same  school,  read 
the  same  books,  work  in  the  same  office ;  but  anybody 
who  comes  near  them  feels  the  difference.  There  is  the 
heroic  element  in  one,  and  the  heroic  element  is  absent 
in  the  other. 

And  what  is  true  about  a  special  occupation  is  true 
about  life  as  a  whole.  The  fundamental  difference  lies 
between  the  men  who  think  that  life  is  for  them,  that 
this  great  world  of  living  things  is  the  reservoir  out  of 


THE  HEROISM   OF  FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  169 

which  they  are  to  draw  pleasure  and  good ;  and  the  other 
men  who  think  that  they  are  for  life,  that  in  this  uni- 
verse of  living  things  there  is  a  divine  idea  and  purpose 
to  which  they,  coming  in  their  appointed  time  in  the 
long  ages,  are  to  minister  with  what  power  of  service 
they  possess.  Everywhere  there  runs  this  difference. 
It  appears  in  men's  thought  about  God.  To  one  man 
God  is  a  vast  means,  working  for  his  comfort.  To  an- 
other man  God  is  a  vast  end,  to  which  his  powers  strive 
to  make  their  contribution.  Everywhere  there  runs  this 
difference.  And  it  is  just  this  larger  conception  of  life 
everywhere  to  which  the  name  heroic  properly  belongs. 
This  largeness  involves  unselfishness.  The  heroic  pub- 
lic man  or  lawyer  or  doctor  or  liver  of  human  life  is 
he  who  gives  himself  to  his  interest  instead  of  asking 
his  interest  to  give  itself  to  him.  The  heroic  moments 
in  all  of  our  most  unheroic  lives  have  been  those  in 
which  we  have  been  able  to  give  ourselves  to  our  art  or 
occupation,  counting  our  lives  contributions  to  its  idea, 
instead  of  demanding  that  it  should  give  itself  to  us 
and  contribute  to  our  wealth  or  welfare. 

It  is  clear  then,  first  of  all,  that  heroism  is  not  merely 
a  thing  of  circumstances.  There  are  two  ideas  which  men 
are  apt  vulgarly  to  associate  with  their  idea  of  a  hero. 
One  of  them  is  prominence,  and  the  other  is  suffering. 
The  ordinary  notion  of  a  hero  is  either  of  a  prominent 
and  famous  man,  or  of  a  man  who  has  borne  suffering 
manfully.  Now  it  may  be  that  an  unselfish  and  devoted 
life  in  such  a  world  as  this  in  which  we  live  has  such  a 
tendency  to  bring  a  man  into  hard  conflict  with  the  hard 
things  about  him,  that  pain  will  come  to  be  a  very 
frequent  accompaniment  of  heroism.     But  evidently,  if 


170  THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

what  I  have  said  is  true,  there  is  no  necessary  company 
between  them.  There  may  be  pain  without  heroism, 
pain  inspired  by  selfishness,  and  making  the  man  who 
suffers  all  the  smaller  and  more  self-involved.  On  the 
other  hand  there  may  be  heroism  without  pain,  self- 
devotion  with  all  the  circumstances  of  happiness.  And 
so  with  regard  to  prominence.  The  essence  of  heroic 
life  is  the  apprehension  by  any  man  of  the  idea  of  a 
cause,  and  the  abandonment  of  his  life  to  that  idea. 
Such  an  abandonment,  such  a  filling  of  his  life  with 
such  an  idea,  will  make  him  naturally  the  type-man  of 
his  cause,  will  set  him  in  its  fore-front  and  will  bring 
him  into  conflict  with  all  men  who  oppose  his  cause  ; 
but  these  are  accidents.  In  obscurity  and  luxury  it 
may  be  that  a  man  still  is  a  hero.  Even  there  he  may 
fasten  upon  the  idea  of  a  cause  and  give  himself  up  to 
it  and  effectively  live  for  it,  and  if  he  does  that  he  is  a 
hero.  In  heaven  all  life  will  be  heroic.  Every  being 
there  will  live  for  the  divine  ideas  of  things.  No  man 
will  think  that  the  golden  streets  and  the  hosts  that  fill 
them,  and  the  unspeakable  INIajesty  which  sits  in  the 
centre  of  all  upon  the  throne,  are  for  him.  Every  soul 
will  delight  to  count  its  eternity  a  contribution  to  them. 
But  there  will  be  no  unhappiness,  no  pain  in  heaven. 
The  accidents  will  have  been  changed,  and  will  show 
that  they  were  never  more  than  accidents,  but  the 
essence  of  heroism  will  be  the  same  forever. 

I  put  then  as  the  first  element  of  heroism  this  quality 
of  Ideality ;  the  power,  that  is,  of  getting  hold  of  the  idea 
of  any  cause  or  occupation  or  of  life  in  general,  so  that 
the  cause,  the  occupation,  or  life  becomes  a  living  thing 
to  which  a  man  may  give  himself  with  all  his  powers. 


THE   HEROISM   OF  FOEEIGN   MISSIONS.  171 

That  quality  of  ideality  is  the  essential  thing  in  heroism. 
There  can  be  no  hero  without  that.  It  is  just  what 
makes  the  difference  between  the  "  dumb,  driven  cattle  " 
and  the  "  heroes  in  the  strife."  Look  through  the  ranks 
of  your  profession.  Are  there  not  both  cattle  and  heroes 
there  ?  Are  there  not  times  in  your  work  when  you  are 
of  the  cattle  sort,  when  the  idea  fades  out  of  what  you 
are  doing,  and  nothing  but  the  clatter  of  its  machinery 
remains  ?  Alas  for  you  if  such  times  are  in  the  pre- 
ponderance, if  they  are  not  lost  in  the  general  presence 
of  the  idea  of  your  labor,  making  it  an  inspiration  and 
making  you  heroic  in  your  dedication  to  it. 

Along  with  this  primary  quality  of  all  heroism  there 
go  two  others,  closely  related  to  it.  They  are  Magna- 
nimity and  Bravery.  The  true  hero  is  generous  and 
brave.  Whence  comes  his  generosity  ?  Is  it  not  of  the 
very  essence  of  his  ideality.  Let  me  be  a  scholar,  for 
instance.  The  first  question  will  be  whether  I  have  got 
hold  of  the  idea  of  scholarship  and  have  given  myself  to 
it.  Am  I  studying  for  my  own  sake,  to  make  myself 
famous  or  accomplished ;  or  am  I  studying  for  scholar- 
ship's sake,  to  make  my  branch  of  study  more  complete, 
to  glorify  and  multiply  the  cause  of  knowledge  in  the 
world  ?  If  the  first,  I  have  no  real  ground  of  sympathy 
with  other  scholars.  I  do  not  take  a  cordial  interest  in 
their  success.  I  am  not  tempted  to  help  them.  1  am 
tempted  again  and  again  to  hinder  them.  I  am  open  to 
all  kinds  of  jealousy  and  spite  and  little-mindedness. 
If  the  latter,  I  am  anxious  for  every  other  worker's 
success,  as  well  as  for  my  own.  I  am  as  glad  of  another 
man's  discovery  as  if  I  had  made  it.  I  cannot  be  jealous 
of  the  light  which  some  new  hand  flings  on  that  subject 


172  THE  HEROISM   OF  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

which  it  is  the  object  of  my  life  to  glorify.  I  will  help 
every  brother  student  as  eagerly  as  I  will  help  myself. 
Here  is  magnanimity.  You  see  how  closely  it  is  bound 
up  with  ideality.  The  magnanimous  public  man  is  he 
who  so  lives  for  the  ideas  of  his  country  that  he  is  not 
jealous  but  glad  when  he  sees  other  men  doing  more 
for  the  development  of  these  ideas  than  he  can  do.  The 
matjnanimous  churchman  is  he  who  cares  so  much  for 
the  church  that  he  will  help  any  otber  man's  work  for 
her  as  devotedly  as  if  it  were  his  own.  The  magnan- 
imous man  is  he  who  has  so  conceived  the  idea  of  man- 
hood, to  whom  humanity  is  so  sublime  a  thing,  that  he 
will  help  another  man  to  complete  himself,  to  be  as  good 
and  as  great  as  he  can  be,  with  as  much  earnestness  as 
he  will  expend  in  his  own  culture.  Here  is  generosity. 
You  see  that  it  is  not  mere  good-nature.  It  is  most 
intelligent  and  has  its  reasons.  And  this  is  the  second 
element  of  heroism. 

And  the  third  element  is  Bravery.  We  can  see  how 
heroic  bravery  too  belongs  with  the  quality  which  dis- 
covers and  fastens  upon  ideas.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
bravery ;  one  which  comes  from  the  recollection  of  self, 
the  other  which  comes  from  the  forgetfulness  of  self 
An  Indian  is  brave  when  out  of  sheer  pride  he  lets  men 
drive  their  burning  fagots  into  his  flesh  and  utters  no 
cry.  A  fireman  is  brave  when  for  his  duty  he  rushes 
into  a  burning  house  and,  all  scorched  and  bleeding, 
brings  out  the  ransomed  child.  The  first  is  brave  by 
self-recollection.  The  second  is  brave  by  self-forgetful- 
ness.  The  first  has  gathered  up  all  his  self-possession 
and  said,  "  Now  I  will  not  flinch  or  fear  because  it  is 
unworthy  of  me."     The  second  has  cast  all  recollection 


THE  HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  173 

of  himself  aside  and  said,  "  That  child  will  die  if  I  stay- 
here."  We  need  not  ask  which  of  these  two  braveries 
is  heroic.  There  is  a  courage  that  comes  of  fear.  A 
man  learns  that  on  the  whole  it  is  safer  in  the  world  not 
to  dodge  and  shirk,  and  so  he  goes  on  and  meets  life  as 
it  comes.  There  is  nothing  heroic  about  that.  A  man 
wants  to  run  away,  but  because  his  fear  of  disgrace  is 
greater  than  his  fear  of  bullets  he  stays  in  the  ranks  and 
shuts  his  eyes  and  marches  on.  There  is  nothing  heroic 
about  that.  A  man  is  afraid  as  he  sits  alone  and  thinks 
about  a  task,  but  when  he  gets  among  his  fellow-men, 
a  mere  contagious  feeling  takes  possession  of  him  and 
he  is  ready  to  fight  and  die  because  other  men  are  fight- 
ing or  dying,  like  a  dog  in  a  pack  of  dogs.  That  is  "  the 
courage  corporate  that  drags  the  coward  to  heroic  death." 
There  is  nothing  heroic  about  that.  Only  when  a  man 
seizes  the  idea  and  meaning  of  some  cause,  and  in  the 
love  and  inspiration  of  that  is  able  to  forget  himself  and 
go  to  danger  fearlessly  because  of  his  great  desire  and 
enthusiasm,  only  then  is  bravery  heroic. 

Ideality,  magnanimity,  and  bravery  then ;  these  are 
what  make  the  heroes.  These  are  what  glorify  certain 
lives  that  stand  through  history  as  the  lights  and  beacons 
of  mankind.  The  materialist,  the  sceptic,  the  coward, 
he  cannot  be  a  hero.  We  talk  sometimes  about  the  un- 
heroic  character  of  modern  life.  We  say  that  there  can 
be  no  heroes  nowadays.  We  point  to  our  luxurious 
living  for  the  reason.  But  oh,  my  friends,  it  is  not  in 
your  silks  and  satins,  not  in  your  costly  houses  and 
your  sumptuous  tables,  that  your  unheroic  lives  consist. 
It  is  in  the  absence  of  great  inspiring  ideas,  of  generous 
enthusiasms,  and  of  the  courage  of  self-forgetfulness.    It 


174  THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

may  be  that  you  must  throw  away  your  comfortable 
living  to  get  these  things ;  but  your  lack  of  heroism  is 
not  in  your  comfortable  living,  but  in  the  absence  of 
these  things.  Do  not  blame  a  mere  accident  for  that 
which  lies  so  much  deeper.  There  are  moments  when 
you  bear  your  sorrows,  when  you  watch  by  your  dying, 
when  you  bury  your  dead,  when  you  are  anxiously 
teaching  your  children,  when  you  resist  a  great  tempta- 
tion, when  your  faith  or  your  country  is  in  danger; 
there  are  such  moments  with  you  all  when  you  seize 
the  idea  of  human  living  and  are  made  generous  and 
brave  because  of  it.  Then,  for  all  your  modern  dress, 
for  all  your  modern  parlor  where  you  stand,  you  are 
heroic  like  David,  like  Paul,  like  any  of  God's  knights 
in  any  of  the  ages  which  are  most  remote  and  pictu- 
resque. Then  you  catch  some  glimpse  of  a  region  into 
which  you  might  enter,  and  where,  with  no  blast  of 
trumpets  or  waving  of  banners,  you  might  be  heroic  all 
the  time. 

And  now  we  may  turn  to  that  which  has  been  our 
purpose  in  all  we  have  been  saying.  What  we  have 
had  in  our  mind  is  the  great  work  of  foreign  mis- 
sions, and  we  have  been  led  to  speak  of  heroism  in  its 
three  fold  quality  of  ideality  and  magnanimity  and  bra- 
very. Now  no  cause  ever  really  takes  possession  of  the 
world  unless  it  puts  on  the  heroic  aspect,  unless  it  shows 
itself  capable  of  inspiring  heroism.  Christianity  is  sub- 
ject to  this  law  like  every  other  cause.  It,  too,  must  show 
itself  heroic  or  it  fails  to  seize  and  hold  mankind ;  and 
it  is  in  the  desire  for  universal  extension,  the  desire  to 
make  its  Master  known  to  all  men,  the  desire  for  foreign 
missions,  that  Christianity  asserts  her  heroism. 


THE  HEEOISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  175 

It  is  true  indeed  that  Christianity  is  itself  heroic 
life.  All  that  there  is  in  human  living  becomes  magni- 
fied and  glorified  to  its  best  when  it  is  put  under  the 
leadership  of  Christ.  The  deepest  idea  of  life  is  brought 
out  and  proclaimed ;  the  true  generosity  of  life  is  uttered  ; 
its  selfishness  is  broken  up ;  and  love,  which  is  the  power 
of  the  Christian  life,  casts  out  fear  and  makes  the  ser- 
vant of  the  Savior  brave.  The  Christian  is  the  heroic 
man.  Ah !  as  I  say  that,  does  there  float  across  your 
mind  the  memory  of  many  and  many  a  time  in  history, 
or  in  the  life  that  you  have  watched,  or  in  your  own  life 
which  you  have  lived,  my  Christian  friends,  when  the 
Christian  has  not  been  the  hero ;  when,  even  in  the 
name  of  Christ,  the  Christianity  which  called  Him  its 
Master  has  seemed  to  forsake  ideas  and  to  give  itself 
over  to  machineries,  seemed  to  make  life  dwindle  into  a 
little  system  of  economies  for  securing  to  privileged  souls 
freedom  from  pain  and  a  share  in  luxuries  here  and 
hereafter,  seemed  to  make  men  cowardly  instead  of 
brave  ?  I  know  it !  I  know  it !  Such  things  have  been ; 
such  things  have  been  and  they  still  are,  in  the  name  of 
Christ.  But  such  things  are  not  Christianity.  Look  at 
Christ !  The  idealist,  the  generous,  the  brave  !  Anything 
that  is  mechanical,  that  is  selfish,  that  is  cowardly,  coming 
into  His  religion,  comes  as  an  intruder  and  an  enemy. 
Christianity  in  its  essence  is,  Christianity  in  its  long 
and  general  influence  always  has  been,  heroic ;  the 
power  of  ideality  and  magnanimity  and  bravery  among 
men. 

But  if  Christianity  is  heroic  life,  the  missionary  work 
is  heroic  Christianity,  By  this  time  I  am  sure  that  I 
have  made  it  clear  that  if  that  is  true  at  all  it  is  true 


176  THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

not  from  any  mere  circumstances  of  personal  privation 
which  attach  to  the  missionary  life,  but  because  the  mis- 
sionary life  has  most  closely  seized  and  most  tenaciously 
holds  and  lives  by  the  essential  central  life-idea  of 
Christianity.  What  is  that  idea  ?  Out  of  all  the  com- 
plicated mass  of  Christian  thought  and  faith,  is  there  any 
one  conception  which  we  can  select  and  say,  "  That  is 
the  idea  of  Christianity  "  ?  Certainly  there  is.  What 
is  it  ?  That  man  is  the  child  of  God.  That,  beyond  all 
doubt,  is  the  idea  of  Christianity.  Everything  issues 
from,  everything  returns  to,  that.  Man's  first  happiness, 
man's  fallen  life,  man's  endless  struggle,  man's  quenchless 
hope,  —  they  are  all  bound  up  and  find  their  explana- 
tion in  the  truth  that  man  was,  and  has  never  ceased  to 
be,  and  is,  the  child  of  God.  Therein  lies  the  secret  of 
the  incarnation,  all  the  appeal  of  the  Savior's  life,  all 
the  power  of  the  Savior's  death.  It  is  the  Son  of  God 
bringing  back  the  children  to  their  Father.  Now  we 
believe  that,  we  love  it,  we  live  by  it,  all  of  us  in  all 
our  Christian  life.  But  when  a  man  gathers  up  his  life 
and  goes  out  simply  to  spend  it  all  in  telling  the  chil- 
dren of  God  who  never  heard  it  from  any  other  lips 
than  his  that  their  Father  is  their  Father ;  when  all  that 
he  has  known  of  Christ  is  simply  turned  into  so  much 
force  by  which  the  tidings  of  their  sonship  is  to  be 
driven  home  to  hearts  that  do  not  easily  receive  so  vast 
a  truth ;  to  that  man  certainly  the  idea  has  become  a 
master  and  a  king,  as  it  has  not  to  us.  Belief  is  power. 
By  the  quantity  of  power  I  may  know  the  quantity  of 
belief.  He  is  the  true  idealist,  not  who  possesses  ideas, 
but  whom  ideas  possess  ;  not  the  man  whose  life  wears 
its  ideas  as  ornamental  jewels,  but  the  man  whose  ideas 


THE  HEROISM   OF  FOREIGN  MISSIONS.  177 

shape  his  life  like  plastic  clay.  And  so  the  true  Chris- 
tian idealist  is  he  whose  conception  of  man  as  the  re- 
deemed child  of  God  has  taken  all  his  life  and  moulded 
it  in  new  shapes,  planted  it  in  new  places,  so  filled  and 
inspired  it  that,  like  the  Spirit  of  God  in  Elijah,  it  has 
taken  it  up  and  carried  it  where  it  never  would  have 
chosen  to  go  of  its  own  lower  will. 

Here  lies,  I  think,  the  real  truth  about  the  relation 
which  the  missionary  life  has  to  the  surrenders  and  pri- 
vations and  hardships  which  it  has  to  undergo.  The 
missionary  does  give  up  his  home  and  all  the  circum- 
stances of  cultivated  comfortable  life,  and  goes  out  across 
the  seas,  among  the  savages  to  tell  them  of  the  great 
Christian  truth,  to  carry  them  the  gospel.  I  am  sure 
that  often  a  great  deal  too  much  has  been  made  of  the 
missionary's  surrenders,  as  if  they  were  something  al- 
most inconceivable,  as  if  they  in  themselves  constituted 
some  vague  sort  of  claim  upon  the  respect  and  even  the 
support  of  other  men.  But  we  are  constantly  reminded 
that  that  is  not  so.  The  missionaries  themselves,  from 
St.  Paul  down,  have  never  claimed  mere  pity  for  their 
sacrifices.  It  is  other  people,  it  is  the  speakers  in  mis- 
sionary meetings,  who  have  claimed  it  for  them.  The 
sacrifices  of  the  missionary  every  year  are  growing  less 
and  less.  As  civilization  and  quick  communication 
press  the  globe  ever  smaller,  and  make  life  on  the  banks 
of  the  Ganges  much  the  same  that  it  is  on  the  banks  of 
the  Charles,  the  sacrifices  of  the  missionary  life  grow 
more  and  more  slight.  And  always  there  is  the  fact, 
which  people  are  always  ready  to  point  out,  that  other 
men  do  every  day  for  gain  or  pleasure  just  what  the 
missionary  does  for  the  gospel,  and  nobody  wonders. 

12 


178  THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

The  merchant  leaves  his  home  and  goes  and  lives  in 
China  to  make  money.  The  young  man  dares  the  sea 
and  explores  the  depths  of  Africa  or  the  jungles  of  the 
islands  for  scientific  discovery  or  for  pure  adventure. 
What  is  the  missionary  more  than  these  ?  Wliat  do  you 
say  to  me  about  his  saorifices  ?  Only  this,  I  think,  that 
the  fact  that  he  is  ready  to  do  the  same  things  —  not 
greater,  if  you  please,  but  the  same  things  —  for  the 
Christian  idea,  which  other  men  will  do  for  money  or 
for  discovery  or  for  adventure,  is  a  great  proof  of  the 
power  of  that  idea.  It  takes  at  once  what  some  people 
call  a  vague  sentiment,  and  co-ordinates  it  as  a  working 
force  with  the  mightiest  powers  the  world  knows ;  for 
there  are  none  stronger  than  these,  money,  discovery, 
and  adventure.  And  since  men  are  to  be  judged  not 
merely  by  the  way  in  which  they  submit  themselves  to 
forces  but  by  the  quality  of  the  forces  to  which  they 
submit,  not  merely  by  their  obediences  but  by  their 
masters,  not  merely  by  their  enthusiasms  but  by  the 
subjects  about  which  they  are  enthusiastic ;  it  certainly 
is  a  different  sort  of  claim  to  our  respect  when  a  man 
dares  any  kind  of  sacrifice  for  Christ  and  His  gospel  of 
man's  divine  sonship,  from  that  which  comes  when  a 
man  dares  just  the  same  sacrifices  for  himself,  or  for  his 
family  which  is  but  his  extended  self.  Here  is  the 
true  value  to  give  to  the  often  told  and  ever  touching 
story  of  the  missionary's  sufferings.  I  resent  it  as  an 
insult  to  him  if  I  am  asked  to  pity  him  because,  going 
to  preach  the  gospel  of  the  Savior,  he  very  often  has  to 
sleep  out-doors  and  walk  till  he  is  footsore,  and  stand 
where  men  jeer  at  him  and  taunt  him.  But  I  rejoice 
in  that  story  of  suffering  because  I  can  see  through  it 


THE  HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  179 

the  clear  strong  power  of  his  faith  in  that  gospel  for 
which  he  undertook  it  all.  The  suffering  is  valueless 
save  for  the  motive  which  shines  through  it.  The 
world  is  right  when,  seeing  Paul  and  a  whole  shipload 
of  other  people  wrecked  upon  the  coast  of  Malta,  it  has 
wholly  forgotten  or  never  cared  who  the  other  people 
were,  but  has  seized  the  shipwrecked  Paul  and  set 
him  among  the  heroes.  It  was  not  the  shipwreck  but 
the  idea  that  shone  through  the  shipwreck,  that  made 
his  heroism.  He  was  a  martyr,  a  witness.  The  roar 
of  the  breakers  and  the  crash  of  the  ship  were  but  the 
emphasis.  The  essential  force  and  meaning  was  in  the 
great  apostle's  faith.  The  poor  wretches  who  suffered 
with  him  were  on  their  own  selfish  errands,  and  the 
shipwreck  could  give  no  real  dignity  or  beauty  to  what 
was  not  in  itself  dignified  or  beautiful. 

It  seems  as  if  I  need  not  take  the  time  to  show 
that  with  the  supreme  ideal  character  of  the  mission- 
ary's life  there  must  go  a  supreme  magnanimity  and 
bravery. 

Look  at  the  point  of  magnanimity.  No  man  can  be 
magnanimous  who  does  not  live  by  ideas.  But  the 
higher  and  the  more  enthusiastic  the  ideas,  the  more 
complete  will  be  the  magnanimity  they  bring.  Now 
the  missionary  idea  that  man  is  God's  child  gives  birth 
to  two  enthusiasms;  one  for  the  Father,  one  for  the 
child ;  one  for  God,  one  for  man.  The  two  blend  to- 
gether without  any  interference,  and  both  together 
drown  the  missionary's  self-remembrance,  with  all  its 
littleness  and  jealousy.  Who  can  tell,  as  the  mission- 
ary stands  there  preaching  the  salvation  to  his  dusky 
congregation,  which  fire  burns  the  warmest  in  his  heart  ? 


180  THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

Is  it  the  love  for  God  or  for  his  brethren  ?  Is  it  the 
Master  who  died  for  him,  or  these  men  for  whom  also 
He  died,  from  whom  his  strongest  inspiration  comes  ? 
No  one  can  tell.  He  cannot  tell  himself  The  Lord 
Himself  in  His  own  parable  foretold  the  noble,  sweet, 
inextricable  confusion.  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it 
unto  one  of  these  ye  have  done  it  unto  Me."  But  surely 
in  the  blended  power  of  the  two  enthusiasms  there  is 
the  strongest  power  of  magnanimity.  All  that  the 
mystic  feels  of  personal  love  of  God,  all  that  the 
philanthropist  knows  of  love  for  man,  these  two,  each 
purifying  and  deepening  and  heightening  the  other, 
unite  in  the  soul  of  him  who  goes  to  tell  the  men 
whom  he  loves  as  his  brethren,  about  God  whom  he 
loves  as  his  Father. 

Of  the  courage  of  the  missionary  life  I  have  already 
spoken.  Its  singularity  and  supremacy  are  not  in  the 
way  in  which  the  missionary  dares  physical  danger; 
other  men  do  that.  It  is  not  in  his  cheerful  bearing  of 
men's  dislike  and  scorn.  That  we  all  know  is  too  easy 
for  us  to  wonder  at  it  when  a  man  is  really  possessed  by 
a  great  idea.  The  real  courage  of  the  missionary  is  in  the 
mixture  of  mental  and  moral  daring  with  which  he 
faces  his  great  idea  itself.  A  man  dares  to  believe,  in 
spite  of  all  discouragement,  in  spite  of  all  the  brutish- 
ness  and  hateful  life  of  men,  in  spite  of  retarded  civili- 
zation and  continual  outbreaks  of  the  power  of  evil,  that 
man  is  still  the  child  of  God,  and  that  the  way  is  wide 
open  for  every  man  to  come  to  his  Father,  and  that  the 
Christ  who  has  redeemed  us  to  the  Father  must  lUti- 
mately  claim  the  whole  world  for  His  own.  That  is  the 
bravest  thing  a  reasonable  man  can  do,  to  thoroughly 


THE   HEROISM   OF   FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  181 

believe  that  and  to  take  one's  whole  life  and  consecrate 
it  to  that  truth,  A  man  may  no  doubt  do  it  heedlessly 
and  thoughtlessly,  just  as  a  man  may  walk  up  to  a  can- 
non's mouth  singing  light  songs,  but  when  a  man  does 
it  with  patient,  calm,  earnest  thoughtfulness,  it  is  the 
bravest  thing  a  man  can  do.  To  face  a  great  idea  and, 
owning  its  mastery,  to  put  our  hands  into  its  hands, 
saying,  "  Lead  where  you  will  and  I  will  go  with  you ; " 
that  is  always  a  more  courageous  thing  than  it  is  to 
fight  with  giants  or  to  bear  pain. 

I  have  pleaded  with  you  this  morning  for  the  heroism 
of  the  missionary  life.  Not  because  of  the  pains  it  suf- 
fers but  because  of  the  essential  character  it  bears  it  is 
heroic.  Pain  is  the  aureole  but  not  the  sainthood.  So 
they  have  marched  of  old,  the  missionaries  of  all  the 
ages  of  the  religion  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  Cross, 
idealists,  believers,  magnanimous  and  brave,  the  heroes 
of  our  faith.  They  were  all  this  because  they  were  mis- 
sionaries. They  could  not  have  been  missionaries  and 
not  have  been  all  this.  You  cannot  picture  mere  ma- 
chines or  disbelievers  or  selfish  men  or  cowards  doingf 
what  they  have  done.  They  have  lived  in  the  midst  of 
infinite  thoughts  and  yet  not  grown  vague.  They  have 
worked  with  the  tools  of  human  life,  but  not  grown 
petty.  In  one  word,  they  have  been  heroes  because  of 
their  faith,  because  their  souls  supremely  believed  in  and 
their  lives  were  supremely  given  to  Christ. 

If,  as  I  believe  with  all  my  heart,  the  world's  fullest 
faith  in  Christ  is  yet  to  come ;  if,  as  I  think,  we  are 
just  coming  now  to  a  simpler  and  deeper  Christianity 
than  the  world  has  ever  known,  who  shall  not  dare  to 


182  THE  HEROISM   OF  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

hope  that  the  missionary  life,  the  heroism  of  Christi- 
anity, the  heroism  of  the  heroism  of  human  life  is  not 
dead,  but  is  just  upon  the  point  of  opening  its  true 
glory  and  living  with  a  power  that  it  has  never  shown 
before  ? 

Let  us  have  some  such  faith  to-day.  It  is  a  little 
heroic  even  to  believe  in  foreign  missions.  If  we  may 
not  be  among  the  heroes,  let  us,  like  the  church  of  old, 
hear  the  Holy  Ghost  and  go  with  Paul  and  Barnabas 
down  to  their  ship  and  lay  our  hands  on  them  and  send 
them  away  with  all  our  sympathy  and  blessing.  So, 
perhaps,  we  can  catch  something  of  their  heroism.  So, 
in  our  quiet  and  home-keeping  Christian  lives,  the  idea 
of  Christianity  may  become  more  clear,  Christ  our  Lord 
more  dear,  and  we  ourselves  be  made  more  faithful, 
more  generous,  and  more  brave. 


XI. 

THE  LAW  OF  LIBERTY. 

"So  speak  ye,  and  so  do,  as  they  that  shall  be  judged  by  the  law  of 
liberty." — James  ii.  12. 

"The  law  of  liberty"  is  the  striking  expression  of 
this  verse,  the  one  that  provokes  our  curiosity. 

Of  all  the  qualities  which  great  books  and  especially 
the  Bible  have,  few  are  more  remarkable  than  their 
power  of  bringing  out  the  unity  of  disassociated  and 
apparently  contradictory  ideas.  One  of  the  peculiari- 
ties of  their  use  of  common  words  is  the  way  in  which 
they  take  two  which  seem  directly  opposite  and,  carry- 
ing each  out  into  its  highest  meaning,  find  for  them  a 
meeting-place  in  some  larger  truth.  It  gives  us  a 
glimpse  of  the  final  unity  of  all  truth.  We  live  down 
about  the  bases  of  the  words  we  use ;  see  them  in  their 
simply  human  relations ;  see  them  where  they  touch  the 
gi'ound.  To  us  they  seem  to  stand  opposite,  over 
against  each  other,  ununited,  ununitable.  But  we  never 
must  forget  that  every  true  thought  outgoes  its  human 
relations,  and  for  all  true  thoughts  there  must  be  some 
place  of  meeting.  Inspiration  is  just  the  entrance  of 
their  complete  meaning  into  human  words ;  and  then, 
filled  with  God,  they  are  illuminated,  and  we  can  trace 
them  all  the  way  up  and  see  that  they  are  not  isolated 
columns,  but  parts  of  a  structure.     They  are  not  oppo- 


184  THE  LAW   OF  LIBERTY. 

site  and  contradictory,  but  they  meet  together  in  an 
arch  of  one  harmonious  meaning.  And  then  all  lan- 
ffuasre  builds  itself  from  being  a  wilderness  of  uncon- 
nected  pillars,  —  about  which  we  wander  as  an  insect 
creeps  from  pillar  to  pillar  across  a  vast  cathedral  floor, 
having  no  suspicion  of  its  unity,  —  into  one  vast  temple 
wherein  intelligent  men  walk  upright,  looking  upward 
to  where  the  great  roof  collects  and  harmonizes  all,  and 
do  intelligible  worship. 

Take  these  two  words,  "  the  law  of  liberty,"  Liberty 
and  Law.  They  stand  over  against  each  other.  Our 
first  conception  of  them  is  as  contradictory.  The  his- 
tory of  human  life,  we  say,  is  a  history  of  their  strug- 
gle. They  are  foes.  Law  is  the  restraint  of  liberty. 
Liberty  is  the  abrogation,  the  getting  rid  of  law.  Each, 
so  far  as  it  is  absolute,  implies  the  absence  of  the  other. 
It  is  a  contradiction  of  terms  to  speak  of  them 
together. 

But  the  expression  of  our  text  suggests  another 
thought,  that  by  the  highest  standards  there  is  no  con- 
tradiction but  rather  a  harmony  and  unity  between  the 
two ;  that  there  is  some  high  point  in  which  they  unite  ; 
that  really  the  highest  law  is  liberty,  the  highest  liberty 
is  law ;  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  law  of  liberty. 
This  is  the  thing  which  we  are  to  study  and  try  to  com- 
prehend. 

In  the  first  place  then,  what  do  we  mean  by  Liberty, 
that  oldest,  dearest,  vaguest  of  the  words  of  man?  I 
have  defined  it  often  to  you.  I  hold  it  to  mean  simply 
the  genuine  ability  of  a  living  creature  to  manifest  its 
whole  nature,  to  do  and  be  itself  most  unrestrainedly. 
Nothing  more,  nothing  less  than  that.     Against  all  tera- 


THE  LAW   OF   LIBEKTY.  185 

porary  and  conventional  ideas  of  freedom  we  assert  that, 
that  no  man  is  a  slave  whose  nature  has  power  to  ex- 
press and  use  all  of  itself;  that  no  man  is  free  whose 
nature  is  restrained  from  such  expression. 

Now  between  this  idea  and  our  ordinary  thought  of 
law  there  must  of  course  be  an  inherent  contradiction. 
The  ordinary  laws  of  social  and  national  life  are  special 
provisions  made  for  the  very  purpose  of  restricting  the 
natures  and  characters  of  their  subjects.  National  law 
does  not  aim  at  the  development  of  individual  charac- 
ter, but  at  the  preservation  of  great  general  interests  by 
the  repression  of  the  characteristic  tendencies  of  indi- 
viduals. One  man  has  a  tendency  to  steal.  The  law 
sets  itself  against  the  freedom  of  his  nature  and  says 
"You  shall  not."  Another's  character  tempts  him  to 
murder.  "No!"  says  the  law,  and  cramps  his  liberty 
of  action  by  the  grasp  of  positive  restriction.  All  na- 
tional and  social  law,  in  the  performance  of  its  office, 
sets  itself  in  struggle  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual, 
and  binds  his  nature  away  from  certain  bad  and  harm- 
ful manifestations.  And  as  law  becomes  despotic  and 
supreme  it  goes  on  to  restrict  more  and  more  the  free- 
dom of  the  personal  nature.  A  tyrannical  law,  which 
nas  slaves  for  its  subjects,  restricts  not  only  bad  but 
good  tendencies.  A  slave  says,  "  I  mean  to  learn  to 
read."  "  No,"  says  the  master.  "  It  is  not  good  for  the 
community  you  live  in.  Your  individual  freedom  must 
yield  to  its  requirements."  And  so  the  law  shuts  his  book 
and  takes  it  away.  Another  slave  says,  "  I  am  going 
to  run  away ;  I  am  my  own  master ; "  but  at  once  the 
law  puts  its  fatal  arm  out  and  draws  him  back  and 
says,   "  No !     It  is  for  our  good  that  you  should  stay. 


186  THE  LAW   OF  LIBERTY. 

Your  freedom  must  yield  again ; "  and  so  it  relocks  the 
fetters. 

Thus  far,  then,  you  see  Law  is  the  opposite  of  Lib- 
erty. Law  between  man  and  man,  in  its  legitimate  and 
its  illegitimate  aspects  alike,  is  the  law  of  constraint. 
It  is  always  seen  holding  man  back,  repressing  some 
tendency  which,  if  the  man  were  perfectly  free,  would 
be  putting  itself  out  to  somebody's  inconveniency.  We 
say  the  word  "  law,"  and  it  has  this  repressive  sound. 
We  hear  the  noise  of  grating  prison-doors,  of  heavy 
keys  groaning  in  their  locks.  We  see  the  lines  of  chains 
or  lines  of  soldiers  that  bind  the  individual's  freedom 
for  some  other  individual's  or  for  society's  advantage. 
Law  is  constraint  as  yet,  and  is  the  foe  of  liberty. 

This  is  the  kind  of  law  which  always  comes  first. 
It  was  the  first  law  of  the  world.  Just  as  soon  as 
Adam  and  Eve  stood  there  free  in  the  garden  a  law 
came  down  and  bound  itself  about  their  liberty.  "  Of 
the  tree  in  the  midst  of  the  garden  ye  may  not  eat." 
This  is  the  first  law  of  every  family.  The  new  life  of 
the  new  child  puts  itself  out  into  some  one  of  its  untried 
tendencies,  and  the  mother's  love,  full  of  a  supreme 
authority,  draws  it  back,  restrains  it,  says  her  first 
"  No ! "  and  thereby  inaugurates,  with  her  first  denial, 
the  struggle  between  liberty  and  law  in  her  child's  life. 
It  is  the  law  of  all  imperfect  and  immature  life,  the  law 
of  all  the  Old  Testaments,  this  law  of  constraint,  this 
law  which  contradicts  the  thought  of  liberty. 

Now  I  make  use  of  this  last  illustration  of  the  parent 
and  the  child  to  show  you  how  this  law  of  immature 
life,  the  law  of  constraint,  being  preparatory,  ceases ; 
and  another,   the  law   of  liberty,  takes  its  place.     We 


THE  LAW   OF   LIBERTY.  187 

saw  the  child's  liberty  and  the  mother's  law  in  conflict. 
The  child  said  "  I  will,"  and  the  mother  said  "  You  shall 
not,"  and  the  mother's  authority  restrained  the  child's 
free  action.  Now  look  at  the  relation  of  those  same  two 
persons  to  each  other  twenty  years  after.  Suppose 
them  to  have  grown  into  that  higher  and  more  beautiful 
ideal  of  parental  and  filial  life,  which  follows  after  the 
age  of  bare  authority  and  submission  has  passed  away. 
The  child  is  a  man.  The  mother  is  gray-haired.  The 
boy  is  free,  his  own  master.  The  whole  idea  of  com- 
mand and  mastery,  the  whole  old  notion  of  a  law  of 
constraint,  has  drifted  away  from  between  them.  But 
is  there  nothing  in  its  place?  See  the  high  dignity 
with  which  the  son  honors  himself  by  bending  to  the 
mother's  wish.  See  with  what  quicker  instinct  he  has 
learned  to  anticipate  her  will.  You  discern  the  whole 
history  of  his  education  in  any  one  act  of  filial  love  you 
see  him  do  her.  His  nature  has  become  so  full,  so 
impregnated  with  the  spirit  of  love  and  obedience,  that 
just  as  soon  as  it  is  free,  its  tendencies  set  that  way. 
Its  free  tendencies  become  to  it  a  law.  Its  liberty, 
with  a  compulsion  that  is  irresistible,  makes  him  her 
servant.  The  law  of  constraint  which  resulted  from 
their  relations  is  over.  The  law  of  liberty  which  has 
its  source  in  his  free,  moral  character  takes  its  place. 
He  is  obedience  and  so  obeys.  He  is  love,  and  so  a 
thousand  loving  acts  strew  the  calm  pathway  where  her 
descending  years  must  walk. 

Now  use  the  illustration.  I  do  not  know  that  I  can 
state  it  better.  The  law  of  constraint  is  that  which 
grows  out  of  man's  outward  relations  with  God.  The 
law  of  liberty  is  that  which  issues  from  the  tendencies 


THE   LAW   OF  LIBERTY. 

of  a  man's  own  nature  inwardly  filled  with  God.  That 
is  the  difference.  Just  as  soon  as  a  man  gets  into  such 
a  condition  that  every  freedom  sets  toward  duty,  then 
evidently  he  will  need  no  law  except  that  freedom,  and 
all  duty  will  be  reached  and  done. 

Here  then,  in  a  moral  character  which  both  desires 
and  is  able  to  attempt  the  right,  have  we  not  reached  a 
meeting  point  of  these  two  contradictions  ?  Have  we 
not  gained  already  some  conception  of  the  meaning  of  a 
Law  of  Liberty  ?  I  have  tried  to  describe  it  simply. 
Here  is  a  law  in  liberty,  a  liberty  in  law.  There  is  no 
compulsion,  and  yet  the  life,  by  a  tendency  of  its  own 
educated  will,  sets  itself  towards  God.  The  man  is 
perfectly  free  and  yet  he  does  God's  will  better  than 
if  he  were  chained  to  do  it.  The  two  pillars  have  met 
and  joined  into  the  arch  of  a  self-deciding  original 
moral  life. 

You  see  then  what  a  fundamental  and  thorough  thing 
this  law  of  liberty  must  be.  It  is  a  law  which  issues 
from  the  qualities  of  a  nature  going  thence  out  into 
external  shape  and  action.  It  is  a  law  of  constraint 
by  which  you  take  a  crooked  sapling  and  bend  it 
straight  and  hold  it  violently  into  line.  It  is  a  law  of 
liberty  by  which  the  inner  nature  of  the  oak  itself 
decrees  its  outward  form,  draws  out  the  pattern-shape  of 
every  leaf,  and  lays  the  hand  of  an  inevitable  necessity 
on  bark  and  bough  and  branch.  All  laws  of  constraint, 
whether  in  trees  or  men,  are  useless  and  cruel  unless  they 
are  preparatory  to,  and  can  pass  into,  laws  of  liberty. 
My  dear  friends,  if  we  understood  this  it  would  certainly 
show  us  the  hoUowness  of  a  great  deal  of  the  life  we 
live.     We  yield  day  after  day,  month  after  month,  on 


THE  LAW   OF   LIBERTY.  189 

through  a  long  series  of  tiresome  years,  to  the  restraints 
of  morality  and  religion.  Morality  says  "  You  must  not 
steal,"  and  we  do  keep  our  fingers  off  our  neighbor's 
goods.  Religion  says  "  You  must  pray  to  God,"  and 
we  do  say  our  prayers  most  toilsomely,  morning  and 
evening,  summer  and  winter,  as  the  years  go  by.  It  is 
of  no  use.  It  aU  comes  to  nothing  unless  these  laws  of 
constraint  are  passing  into  laws  of  liberty  within  us. 
Habits  of  honesty,  habits  of  prayer,  are  mere  bondages 
unless  they  are  helping  somehow  the  production  of  a 
free,  honest,  and  prayerful  character.  The  only  object  in 
bandaging  and  twisting  a  man's  crooked  leg  is  that  some 
day  it  may  get  a  free  straightness  into  it  which  will 
make  it  keep  its  true  shape  when  it  is  set  free  from  ban- 
dages ;  a  law  of  liberty  instead  of  a  law  of  constraint.  If 
that  day  is  never  coming,  bandaging  is  mere  wanton 
cruelty.  Better  take  the  bandages  off  and  let  it  be 
crooked,  if  it  is  getting  no  inner  straightness,  and  will 
be  crooked  as  soon  as  they  are  removed.  Now,  just  so, 
this  discipline  and  education,  all  these  commandments 
and  prohibitions  which  God  lays  on  us ;  they  are  mere 
cruelty,  they  merely  torture  and  worry  humanity,  they 
come  to  nothing,  unless  within  them  some  free  law  of 
inner  rectitude  is  growing  up.  One  looks  across  God's 
great  moral  hospital,  sees  crooked  souls  tied  up  in  con- 
straints, and  wonders,  as  one  might  who  looked  through 
a  surgeon's  ward,  behind  how  many  of  those  bandages  an 
inner  life  is  gathering  which  some  day  will  ask  no  bind- 
ing up  and  need  nothing  but  its  own  liberty  to  be  its 
law.  It  is  a  strange  question.  Suppose  to-morrow  all 
the  laws  of  constraint  should  be  repealed  together; 
nothing  but  laws  of  liberty  left  to  rule  the  world ;  all 


190  THE  LAW   OF  LIBERTY. 

social  penalties,  all  public  restrictions  lifted  off  to- 
gether ;  nothing  left  but  the  last  legislation  of  character. 
What  would  become  of  us  ?  How,  just  as  soon  as  our 
bandages  were  off,  our  unshaped  lives  would  faU  into 
their  shapelessness.  We  should  see  strange  sights  to- 
morrow morning.  The  man  whom  social  decencies 
had  kept  honest  through  many  well-respected  years,  we 
should  see  how  the  long  constraint  with  him  had  been 
just  an  outside  thing,  and  his  law  of  liberty,  when  it 
had  leave  to  exercise  itself,  was  only  a  thief's  law  born 
out  of  a  thievish  heart.  Strange  hands  would  find  their 
way  into  their  neighbor's  treasure.  Eyes  all  unused  to 
glow  with  lust,  would  flame  out  into  unholy  fire  when 
once  the  quality  of  the  inner  heart  had  leave  to  utter 
itself  freely.  I  tell  you,  my  dear  friends,  there  are  very 
few  of  us  indeed  who  could  stand  being  judged  by  the 
law  of  liberty.  Could  you  ?  Would  you  dare,  with 
the  proper  shame  which  a  man  feels  before  his  fellow- 
men,  would  you  dare  to  bid  God  lift  the  constraints 
away,  and  trust  to  the  power  of  truth  and  love  and 
holiness,  to  the  amount  of  God's  Spirit  in  your  own 
heart,  to  carry  you  along  His  way  to  Him  ? 

Thank  God  there  are  a  few,  rare  lives  that  could 
abide  the  test.  They  come  just  often  enough  to  re- 
assure our  faith  in  human  possibilities.  Here  and  there 
a  noble  man,  a  true  woman,  from  whom  we  feel  sure 
that  every  last  restraint  of  positive  external  law  might 
be  lifted  off;  and,  just  as  it  needs  no  hand  to  guide  a 
sunbeam  down  the  air,  just  as  no  heavy  pressure  has  to 
hold  down  the  round  world  into  a  sphere,  so  it  would 
need  nothing  but  the  changed  and  perfected  nature 
which  is  in  them  already  to  find  the  way  and  carry 


THE  LAW   OF  LIBERTY.  191 

them  along  it,  through  every  good,  to  the  great  final 
central  good,  in  God. 

It  is  of  the  first  importance  to  our  understanding  of 
the  gospel  that  we  should  understand  the  difference 
between  the  law  of  constraint  and  the  law  of  liberty.  It 
is  by  the  law  of  liberty,  not  by  the  law  of  constraint, 
that  the  gospel  establishes  its  standards.  Hence  comes 
that  look  of  it  which  is  the  strangest  to  an  outside  spec- 
tator, the  way  in  which  it  sometimes  seems  to  depreciate 
morality  and  deal  with  spiritual  and  sentimental  char- 
acter. Christ  took  His  stand  in  the  midst  of  a  sinning 
world  and,  leaving  many  a  special  sin  unrebuked  about 
Him,  He  just  uncovered  hearts  with  His  question, "  Dost 
thou  believe  in  and  love  Me  ?  "  He  went,  that  is,  back 
to  character.  He  knew  that  acts  could  be  good  for 
nothing  except  as  they  grew  out  of  character.  He 
knew  that  there  could  be  no  morality  with  any  relia- 
bility or  permanence  about  it,  but  what  carried  in  it  the 
enactment  of  a  free  live  life.  On  this  broad  basis  He 
founded  Christian  morality,  not  as  a  new  code  of  laws ; 
that  would  make  Him  only  another  Solon  or  another 
Numa ;  but  as  a  new  life  in  the  world,  as  the  manifes- 
tation of  a  new  regenerated  character.  That  made  Him 
the  world's  Savior,  that  showed  Him  the  world's  God. 

And  again  this  doctrine  of  the  law  of  liberty  makes 
clear  the  whole  order  and  process  of  Christian  conver- 
sion. Laws  of  constraint  begin  conversion  at  the  outside 
and  work  in.  Laws  of  liberty  begin  their  conversion  at 
the  inside  and  work  out.  Which  is  the  true  way  ?  If 
you  are  a  drunkard  and  I  want  to  change  you  by  God's 
help,  how  shall  I  go  to  work  ?     I  may  restrain  you  if  I 


192  THE  LAW   OF  LIBERTY. 

have  the  power,  heap  penalties  upon  you,  shut  up  all 
the  drinking  shops  in  town,  tie  you  up  in  your  room 
day  after  day ;  I  may  try  that  way,  and  I  try  in  vain. 
All  temperance  history  has  proved  it.  Restrictive  leg- 
islation may  do  something  to  keep  sober  men  from 
becoming  drunkards,  but  it  can  never  make  sober  men 
out  of  those  who  are  the  slaves  of  drink  already. 
No ;  I  must  take  another  way.  I  must  feel  about  the 
drunkard  just  exactly  as  I  must  about  the  thief,  about 
the  libertine,  about  the  liar,  that  there  is  no  chance  of 
his  special  sin  being  reformed  unless  the  law  for  its 
reformation  comes  out  of  his  own  soul,  the  law  of  a  free 
character  there  enacting  the  great  "  Thou  shalt  not ! " 
before  which  his  wickedness  must  give  way.  I  must 
feel  sure  of  that ;  and  so  I  must  strike  right  at  the  centre 
and,  no  matter  what  sort  of  a  sinner  he  is,  —  drunkard 
or  libertine  or  thief,  —  I  must  try  somehow  to  get  his 
heart  open  to  the  power  of  Christ,  the  changer  of  hearts. 
I  must  begin  his  reformation  by  trying  after  his  con- 
version. Many  men  would  call  it,  no  doubt,  a  very 
roundabout  and  unpractical  sort  of  way ;  to  go  to  preach- 
ing the  gospel  and  talking  about  a  change  of  heart  to 
some  poor  blear-eyed  inebriate  who  came  staggering  to 
you  to  get  cured  of  his  drunkenness.  But  still  the  fact 
remains  that  if  that  poor  creature's  heart  can  be  changed ; 
and  if  there  is  anything  at  all  in  the  promise  of  a  super- 
natural regeneration  nobody  can  doubt  its  possibility  ;  if 
his  heart  can  be  changed,  not  merely  this  sin  but  all 
sins  must  go  down  before  the  self-enacting  law  of  the 
new  life  which  will  be  in  him.  Other  methods  of  re- 
form may  be  easier  of  application  than  this,  but  where 
is  any  one  which,  once  applied,  sweeps  the  whole  field 
with  such  a  perfect  certainty  of  success  ? 


THE   LAW   OF  LIBERTY.  193 

There  are,  I  doubt  not,  some  among  you  who  need 
just  this  radical  and  thorough  truth.  You  have  some  one 
besetting  sin.  You  have  tried  to  get  rid  of  it ;  you  have 
struggled  with  it ;  you  have  set  every  law  at  work  upon 
it ;  but  there  it  is.  It  is  not  dead.  It  will  not  die. 
You  have  brought  it  up  here  to-night,  and  while  I  speak 
you  are  feeling  how  live  it  is  all  the  time,  that  untruth- 
fulness, that  impurity,  that  selfishness,  which  no  law 
of  constraint  has  yet  sufficed  to  kill.  What  you  need 
is  just  the  law  of  liberty ;  the  law  that  comes  freely 
out  of  a  changed  heart.  You  must  be  converted  by 
God's  Spirit  before  you  can  conquer  down  to  the  root 
that  sin  of  yours.  I  do  not  offer  you  to-night  another 
specific  for  its  cure.  I  only  spread  before  you  the  great 
offer  of  Christ,  wherein  he  promises  to  save  our  souls 
and  make  them  healthy,  so  that  out  of  them  nothing  but 
healthy  fruits  can  grow.  "  Whosoever  will,  let  him  come 
and  drink  of  the  water  of  life  freely." 

Again,  this  truth  throws  very  striking  light  into  one 
of  the  verses  which  precede  our  text,  one  of  the  hardest 
verses  in  the  Bible  to  a  great  many  people.  "  Whoso- 
ever shall  keep  the  whole  law,  and  yet  offend  in  one 
point,  is  guilty  of  all,"  it  is  said.  Why  ?  Because  the 
consistent,  habitual  breakage  of  one  point  proves  that 
the  others  were  kept  under  the  law  of  constraint,  not 
under  the  law  of  liberty.  It  proves  that  the  tendency 
of  the  nature's  liberty,  which  breaks  forth  in  this  one 
place,  is  a  bad  tendency  and  not  a  good  one ;  that  if 
the  nature  had  its  way,  if  all  constraint  was  removed 
and  it  simply  acted  itself  out,  the  nine  points  of  obe- 
dience would  be  less  powerful  than  the  one  point  of 
disobedience.      It  takes  only  one  volcano  anywhere  in 

13 


194  THE  LAW  OF  LIBEKTT. 

the  earth  to  show  that  the  heart  of  the  earth  is  fire, 
and  that  some  day  it  may  burst  through  the  thickest 
crust.  It  takes  only  one  little  quiver  of  flame,  just 
leaking  out  between  the  shingles  of  a  house,  to  prove 
that  the  heart  of  the  house  is  afire,  and  that  no  part 
of  all  its  safe-looking  walls  is  genuinely  secure.  You 
see  the  flame  along  the  shingles,  and  you  speak  of  it 
as  a  whole  ;  "  The  house  is  afire  !  There  is  fire  in  the 
house ! "  Just  so  you  see  the  bad  fiery  nature  which 
the  law  constrains  breaking  through,  and  again  you 
speak  of  it  as  a  whole.  What  particular  shingle  is 
burning  is  of  no  consequence.  "The  law  is  broken. 
The  one  whole  law  is  broken  by  the  one  whole  bad 
heart !  The  man  has  sinned ;  he  is  sin ;  his  law  of 
liberty  is  a  law  of  wickedness."  This  is  the  tragedy  of 
our  single  sins,  dear  friends ;  the  tragedy  of  a  fire  that 
runs  along  the  outline  of  the  structure  and,  little  as  it 
is,  proves  that  the  whole  is  in  danger ;  the  tragedy  of 
one  break  in  the  earth's  crust  down  which  we  read  the 
fearful  possibility  of  the  last  great  catastrophe.  Down 
the  crack  which  some  one  transgression  makes  in  the 
fair  face  of  a  smooth  and  blooming  life,  we  can  see 
waiting  for  God's  judgment-word,  the  fire  before  which 
that  life  shall  be  at  last  consumed  with  fervent  heat. 

The  whole  truth  of  the  law  of  liberty  starts  with  the 
truth  that  goodness  is  just  as  controlling  and  supreme  a 
power  as  badness.  Virtue  is  as  despotic  over  the  life 
she  really  sways  as  vice  can  be  over  her  miserable  sub- 
jects. Here  is  where  we  make  our  mistake.  We  see  the 
great  dark  form  of  viciousness  holding  her  slaves  down  at 
their  work,  wearing  their  life  away  with  the  unceasing 
labor  of  iniquity ;  but  I  should  not  know  how  to  believe 


THE  LAW  OF   LIBERTY.  195 

in  anything  if  I  did  not  think  that  there  was  a  force  in 
liberty  to  make  men  work  as  they  can  never  work 
in  slavery.  You  take  a  state  that  has  been  dependent 
and  make  it  suddenly  independent,  free  it  from  all  the 
old  obligations  arid  tributes,  and  just  let  it  be  at  liberty 
to  develop  its  own  self-reliant  life.  Does  it  stop  work- 
ing and  settle  back  into  barbarism  ?  Does  not  the 
new  liberty  prove  to  it  a  new  law  ?  Does  not  inspira- 
tion come  splendidly  out  of  its  independence,  and  the 
whole  state  lift  itself  up  and  answer  the  demands  of 
its  freedom  with  a  before  untried  capacity  of  work  ? 

So  of  the  man  as  well  as  of  the  state.  You  take  any 
slave  to  whom  his  liberty  has  been  given.  What  is 
the  result  ?  Does  he  just  sit  down  counting  his  liberty 
a  mere  liberty  to  do  nothing,  and,  with  hands  folded 
before  him,  fall  even  far  back  beyond  the  listless  labor 
of  his  slavehood's  days  ?  Ask  the  men  who  have  been 
among  the  emancipated  slaves.  Sometimes,  at  iirst, 
they  tell  us  such  is  the  case ;  but  almost  always,  when 
the  truth  of  liberty  gets  in  and  settles  on  the  poor  dark 
brain,  when  the  poor  chattel  really  gets  to  know  and 
believe  that  he  is  his  own  man,  there  comes  forth  from  the 
new  liberty  a  new  law.  There  is  a  compulsion  about 
the  needs  of  his  novel  life  which  drives  him  harder  and 
gets  more  work  out  of  him  than  his  master's  frown  or 
whip  had  ever  used  to  do.  He  studies  or  digs  or  fights 
under  the  inner  impulse  of  a  new-found  manhood,  which 
is  his  law  of  liberty. 

Now  that  is  an  illustration.  It  represents  the  incen- 
tive power  of  all  freedom.  There  is  one  large  presenta- 
tion of  the  fact  of  sin  which  always  speaks  of  it  as  a 
bondage,  a  constraint,  and  consequently  of  holiness  as 


196  THE  LAW   OF  LIBEKTY. 

freedom  or  liberation.  "  The  bondage  of  sin  and  death.** 
"  The  perfect  liberty  of  the  children  of  God."  Those 
are  the  two  terms.  Now  if  our  illustration  includes  a 
truth,  it  must  be  with  every  bondman  just  as  with  the 
black  slave  of  the  South,  that  his  liberty  will  be  a 
larger  and  more  imperative  compulsion  to  him  than  his 
slavery  can  be.  This  is  what  I  want  to  believe.  When 
I  see  a  man  toiling  in  some  one  of  the  slaveries  of  sin,  I 
want  to  think :  "  Yes,  he  is  working  hard,  but  not  half  as 
hard  as  he  would  if  he  were  free,  and  set  on  by  an  inner 
love  to  labor  for  the  cause  of  holiness."  I  want  to  hold 
that  in  the  nature  of  things  right  has  a  supreme  control 
over  its  servants  which  the  wrong  can  never  win  over  its 
slaves.  And  I  do  hold  it.  I  believe  I  see  it.  I  be- 
lieve there  is  no  more  splendidly  despotic  power  any- 
where than  that  with  which  the  new  life  in  a  man  sets 
him  inevitably  to  do  righteous  and  godly  things.  If 
there  is  one  thing  on  earth  which  is  certain,  which  is 
past  all  doubt,  past  all  the  power  of  mortal  hinderance 
or  perversion,  it  is  the  assurance  with  which  the  good 
man  goes  into  goodness  and  does  good  things,  ruled  by 
the  liberty  of  his  higher  life. 

The  law  of  liberty !  This  is  its  manifestation.  This 
is  the  picture  of  its  meaning,  this  character  of  the 
regenerated  man.  Free,  yet  a  servant !  Free  from  ex- 
ternal compulsions,  free  from  sin ;  yet  a  servant  to  the 
higher  law  that  issues  forever  from  the  God  within  him. 
In  him  is  realized  that  high  conception  of  the  Collect 
in  our  morning  service,  which  you  and  I  utter  Sunday 
after  Sunday,  and  which  he  lives  on  from  day  to  day. 
"  0  God,  whose  service  is  perfect  freedom."  He  never 
says  to  himself  "  I  must."     God  never  speaks  to  him 


THE  LAW   OF  LIBEKTY.  197 

"  Thou  shalt ; "  but  straight  across  every  temptation  and 
expediency,  across  the  prejudices  of  his  own  education 
and  the  perplexing  standards  of  the  world,  across  eveiy 
social  or  national  intimidation,  he  goes  to  do  the  thing 
he  knows  is  right.  He  thinks  right,  and  speaks  right, 
and  acts  right,  simply  because  he  is  right  and  is  com- 
pelled to  it  by  the  liberty  of  his  new  nature.  Liberty 
is  a  positive  thing,  not  merely  negative ;  it  works  and 
lives  and  struggles  and  is  driven  by  a  queenly  compul- 
sion to  everything  that  is  good. 

0  for  such  a  liberty  in  us  !  Look  at  Christ  and  see  it 
in  perfection.  His  was  the  freest  life  man  ever  lived. 
Nothing  could  bind  Him.  He  walked  across  old  Jewish 
traditions  and  they  snapped  like  cobwebs.  He  acted 
out  the  divinity  that  was  in  Him  up  to  the  noblest  ideal 
of  liberty.  But  was  there  no  compulsion  in  His  work- 
ing ?  Hear  Him :  "  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  busi- 
ness." Was  it  no  compulsion  that  drove  Him  those 
,  endless  journeys,  footsore  and  heartsore,  through  His  un- 
grateful land ?  "I  must  work  to-day."  What  slave  of 
sin  was  ever  driven  to  his  wickedness  as  Christ  was  to 
holiness  ?  What  force  ever  drove  a  selfish  man  into  his 
voluptuous  indulgence  with  half  the  irresistibility  that 
forced  the  Savior  to  the  cross  ?  0  my  dear  friends,  who 
does  not  dream  for  himself  of  a  freedom  as  complete  and 
as  inspiring  as  the  Lord's  ?  Who  does  not  pray  that  he 
too  may  be  ruled  by  such  a  sweet  despotic  law  of  lib- 
erty ? 

By  this  law  we  shall  be  judged.  How  simple  and 
sublime  it  makes  the  judgment  day  !  We  stand  before 
the  great  white  throne  and  wait  our  verdict.     We  watch 


198  THE  LAW  OF  LIBERTY. 

the  closed  lips  of  the  Eternal  Judge,  and  our  hearts 
stand  still  until  those  lips  shall  open  and  pronounce  our 
fate;  heaven  or  hell.  The  lips  do  not  open.  The 
Judge  just  lifts  His  hand  and  raises  from  each  soul  be- 
fore Him  every  law  of  constraint  whose  pressure  has 
been  its  education.  He  lifts  the  laws  of  constraint  and 
their  results  are  manifest.  The  real  intrinsic  nature  of 
each  soul  leaps  to  the  surface.  Each  soul's  law  of  lib- 
erty becomes  supreme.  And  each  soul,  without  one 
word  of  condemnation  or  approval,  by  its  own  inner 
tendency,  seeks  its  own  place.  They  turn  and  separate, 
father  from  child,  brother  from  brother,  wife  from  hus- 
band, each  with  the  old  habitual  restrictions  lifted  off, 
turns  to  its  own ;  one  by  an  inner  power  to  the  right 
hand,  another  by  a  like  power  to  the  left ;  these  up  to 
heaven,  and  these  down  to  hell.  Do  we  need  more  ? 
It  needs  no  word,  no  smile,  no  frown.  The  freeing 
of  souls  is  the  judging  of  souls.  A  liberated  nature 
dictates  its  own  destiny.  Could  there  be  a  more  solemn 
judgment  seat  ?  Is  it  not  a  fearful  thing  to  be  "judged 
by  the  law  of  liberty  "  ? 

"  So  speak  ye,  and  so  do,  as  they  that  shall  be  judged 
by  the  law  of  liberty."  Is  this  James,  then,  what  fool- 
ish readers  of  the  Bible  call  him,  a  shallow  moralist  and 
formalist  ?  Is  Paul  or  John  more  profound  ?  How 
must  they  speak  and  do  who  live  in  sight  of  such  a 
judgment  ?  With  what  continual  searching  of  their 
hearts  !  How  solemnly  they  must  speak !  How  sol- 
emnly they  must  do  !  What  a  deep  reverence  and  awe 
and  independence  must  be  in  them !  How  real  the 
things  of  the  soul,  the  things  of  right  and  wrong,  the 
things  of  spiritual  life,  must  be !    Above  all,  how  they 


THE  LAW   OF  UBERTY.  199 

must  wrestle  and  pray  to  win  from  God  that  gift  of  the 
regenerating  Spirit  which  can  change  their  hearts  down 
to  the  core ;  make  them,  like  Christ's  heart,  the  spon- 
taneous source  of  every  holiness;  make  their  law  of 
liberty  a  law  of  everlasting  life  ! 


XIL 

FASTING. 

A  SERMON  FOR  LENT. 

*  Moreover  when  ye  fast,  be  not  as  the  hypocrites  of  a  sad  counte- 
nance. .  .  .  That  thou  appear  not  unto  men  to  fast,  but  unto  thy 
Father  which  is  in  secret." — Matt.  vi.  16,  18. 

The  character  of  the  time  and  place  in  which  the 
earthly  life  of  Christ  our  Lord  was  lived,  has  certainly- 
had  much  to  do  in  shaping  the  whole  growth  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  was  necessary  that  the  incarnation  should 
stand  at  one  special  point  in  history  and  at  one  particu- 
lar spot  upon  the  earth.  That  period  and  spot  must 
have  been  chosen  by  Him  who  sent  His  Son  to  be  the 
Savior.  And  one  consequence  has  been  that  the  vices 
and  errors  which  peculiarly  characterized  the  country  of 
Judea  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  stand  forever  most 
emphatically  denounced,  and  their  opposite  virtues  and 
truths  most  enthusiastically  praised,  by  the  Master  of 
the  Christian  faith. 

Among  other  things  which  had  gone  sadly  wrong  in 
His  time,  there  was  what  we  may  call  the  bodily  treat- 
ment of  the  spiritual  life,  the  treatment  of  the  spiritual 
life  through  the  body  in  which  it  is  enshrined.  And  so 
Jesus  is  especially  drawn  to  declare  what  the  true 
method  of  that  treatment  is.  It  shows  us  how  natu- 
rally the  evils  which  He  encountered  spring  out  of  hu- 
man nature,  when  we  see  that  not  even  the  clearness  of 


FASTING.  201 

Christ's  teaching  upon  the  subject  has  prevented  the 
Christian  world  from  dropping  back  into  the  same  evils 
over  and  over  again.  That  there  is  such  a  bodily  treat- 
ment of  the  soul's  life  is  clear  enough.  Hardly  any- 
thing can  happen  to  our  bodies  that  does  not  send  some 
influence  in  to  the  most  spiritual  part  of  us.  The  con- 
dition of  the  body  tells  immediately  on  the  condition  of 
its  inmate.  And  immediately  the  question  comes,  —  the 
question  which  has  always  come  to  those  who  cared  ear- 
nestly for  their  soul's  life,  —  since  everything  that  hap- 
pens to  the  body  tells  upon  the  soul,  may  we  not  treat 
the  body  so  as  to  help  the  soul  ?  That  idea  runs 
through  the  whole  of  man's  religious  history.  It  in- 
spires alike  the  monk  flogging  himself  in  his  lonely 
cell,  and  the  fresh  young  English  believer  in  muscular 
Christianity.  Out  of  that  idea  sprang  the  whole  theory 
and  practice  of  fasting,  or  the  denial  of  any  of  the  appe- 
tites of  the  body,  with  a  view  to  the  training  of  the  cor- 
responding appetites  of  the  soul.  That  is  what  fasting 
means.  It  is  not  mere  abstinence  from  food  or  from 
any  other  pleasure,  in  itself.  It  is  abstinence  with  a 
purpose.  This  idea  of  the  soul  in,  and  capable  of  being 
treated  through,  the  body,  was  essential  to  it.  Now, 
when  Jesus  came  to  those  Jews  He  found  the  practice 
stiU  prevailing,  but  its  purpose  had  passed  out  of  it.  It 
was  an  honorable,  almost  a  required  thing,  to  practise 
certain  abstinences ;  but  that  care  for  the  soul's  life,  out 
of  which  the  habit  of  abstinence  had  sprung,  was  gone. 
Christ's  whole  endeavor,  for  the  Jews  and  for  the  gen- 
erations who,  to  His  sight,  stood  crowding  behind  the 
Jews,  was  to  bring  the  purpose  back  into  the  practice. 
A  purpose  is  to  every  practice  what  an  inhabitant  is  to 


202  FASTING. 

a  house.  A  house  can  stand  with  no  inhabitant,  but  it 
soon  becomes  rotten  and  goes  to  decay.  You  can  tell 
in  a  day  when  a  tenant  has  moved  into  a  house  which 
has  stood  unoccupied.  The  house  puts  on  at  once  the 
look  of  life.  Its  breaks  and  ruins  are  repaired.  It  is 
renewed  and  preserved  by  its  new  occupancy.  So  a 
practice  may  stand  after  its  purpose  is  dead,  but  it  is 
weak  and  soon  grows  rotten  and  decays.  But  if  you 
can  bring  its  purpose  back  into  it  again,  it  assumes 
once  more  the  look  of  life.  Its  broken  walls  are  re- 
built, its  windows  mended,  and  its  gates  repaired. 
Many  men  attempt  to  keep  up  a  body  of  good  habits 
without  any  spiritual  purpose  of  goodness  to  inhabit 
them.  It  is  as  anxious  and  costly  and  hopeless  an  un- 
dertaking as  would  be  the  attempt  to  keep  in  repair  a 
whole  village  of  unoccupied  houses.  But  put  the  pur- 
pose into  the  practice  and  let  it  live  there,  and  it  is 
strange  how  the  practice  takes  care  of  its  own  repairs 
and  is  always  sound  and  whole. 

Lent  begins  this  week,  and  the  idea  of  Lent  is  spirit- 
ual culture,  and  always,  as  a  part  of  that  idea,  there  has 
been  associated  with  Lent  the  thought  of  abstinence. 
We  are  looking  forward  to  a  soberer  and  quieter  life, 
a  life  which  in  some  form  or  other  is  to  fast  from  some 
of  its  indulgences.  And  the  old  danger  comes  up  with 
the  old  duty,  the  danger  lest  the  fasting  should  become 
to  us  as  dead  a  thing  as  it  was  to  those  Jews.  To  guard 
against  that  danger,  ought  we  not  to  try  to  put  its  highest 
purpose  into  this  practice  to  which  we  annually  return  ? 
Is  it  not  well  that  on  this  Sunday  before  Lent  we  should 
try  to  see  what  God  designs  by  those  Lents,  those  periods 
of  sobered  life  and  abstinence  from  outward  pleasures. 


FASTING.  203 

which  both  in  His  word  and  in  the  intimations  of  our 
own  nature  have  His  sanction  and  authority  ? 

God  has  a  reason  for  everything.  Our  best  religious 
progress  consists  in  large  part  of  this,  the  coming  by 
sympathy  with  Him  to  see  the  reasons  of  what  have 
been  to  us  bare  commandments.  The  change  from  the 
arbitrary  to  the  essential  look  in  what  God  does  is  the 
richest  and  most  delightful  feature  of  the  spiritual 
growth.  God  says  that  He  will  punish  the  wicked.  I 
bow  submissive,  but  am  puzzled  and  depressed.  He 
says  so,  and  it  must  be  right.  But  by  and  by  I  come  to 
know  that  He  must  punish  the  wicked,  that  the  wicked 
man  punishes  himself,  and  all  is  changed.  The  puzzle, 
the  bewilderment,  is  gone.  God  says,  "  Love  me  and  you 
shall  prosper."  It  sounds  like  an  arbitrary  reward  given 
to  His  own  favorites ;  but  we  go  on  to  see  that  to  love 
Him  is  prosperity,  and  then  the  heart  rests  satisfied. 
So  God  says, "  Curb  and  deny  the  body,  and  the  soul  shall 
thrive."  Gradually  again  we  come  to  see  that  this  too 
is  essential  and  not  arbitrary,  and  to  trace  the  principles 
under  which  physical  mortification  ministers  to  spiritual 
life.  One  of  the  greatest  joys  of  heaven  must  forever 
be  this  deepening  and  deepening  sight  of  the  essential 
behind  what  seemed  arbitrary  in  the  ways  of  God. 

Let  us  ask  what  is  the  use  of  fasting,  for  so  we  shall 
best  come  to  understand  the  true  methods  and  degrees  of 
fasting.  And  let  us  begin  with  this.  All  bodily  disci- 
pline, all  voluntary  abstinence  from  pleasure  of  whatever 
sort,  must  be  of  value  either  as  a  symbol  of  something 
or  as  a  means  of  something.  These  two  functions  be- 
long to  it  as  being  connected  with  the  body,  which  is  at 
once  the  utterer  and  the  educator  of  the  soul  within. 


204  TASTING. 

Just  suppose  any  great  mental  or  moral  change  to  come 
in  a  man's  life.  We  will  not  speak  of  the  great  funda- 
mental reUgious  change  of  a  man's  conversion ;  but  any 
change  from  frivolity  to  earnestness,  from  lightness  to 
seriousness  of  life.  He  who  has  been  careless,  free,  and 
irresponsible,  taking  life  as  it  came,  with  no  reality,  no 
sense  of  duty,  undertakes  a  different  way  of  living,  be- 
gins to  study,  begins  to  work,  seeks  knowledge,  accepts 
obligations.  The  old  life  fades  away  and  a  new  life 
begins.  Self-indulgence  is  put  aside.  Self-devotion 
takes  its  place.  This  is  a  spiritual,  an  inward  change. 
It  is  independent  of  outward  circumstances.  A  man 
conceivably  may  live  this  new  life,  and  everything  ex- 
ternal be  still  the  same  that  it  has  always  been.  But 
practically  this  more  earnest  inward  life  suits  the  outer 
life  to  itself.  Quickly  or  gradually  the  man  who  has 
begun  to  live  more  seriously  within,  begins  to  live  more 
simply  without.  He  comes  instinctively  to  less  gor- 
geous dresses  and  barer  walls  and  slighter  feasts.  The 
outer  life  is  restrained  and  simplified.  And  this  re- 
Sftraint  and  simplicity  is  at  once  a  symbol  or  expression 
of  the  changed  inner  life,  and  a  means  for  its  cultiva- 
tion. If  the  change  is  one  which  involves  repentance 
and  self-reproach,  the  giving  up  of  a  life  which  never 
ought  to  have  been  lived  at  all  for  one  that  always  has 
been  a  duty,  then  both  of  these  offices  of  the  outward 
self-denial  become  plainer.  The  stripping  of  the  old 
luxury  off  from  the  life  is  at  once  an  utterance  of  hum- 
ble regret  for  a  wrong  past,  and  also  an  opening  of  the 
soul  to  new  and  better  influences.  It  is  as  when  an 
effeminate  reveller  at  a  banquet  is  suddenly  summoned 
to  a  battle  where  he  ought  to  be  in  the  front  rank.     As 


PASTING.  205 

he  springs  up  from  the  couch  in  self-reproach,  the  cast- 
ing away  of  his  garlands  and  his  robes  means,  first,  his 
shame  at  having  been  idle  and  feasting  when  he  ought 
to  have  been  at  work ;  and  second,  his  eagerness  to  have 
his  limbs  free  so  that  the  work  which  he  has  now  un- 
dertaken may  be  weU  done.  His  stripping  off  of  his 
wanton  luxuries  is  at  once  a  symbol  of  his  self-reproach 
for  the  past,  and  a  means  of  readiness  for  the  new  work 
that  awaits  him.  And  that  is  the  meaning  of  all  vol- 
untary mortification  which  has  any  meaning.  You  go 
to  a  monk  in  his  cell,  and  say :  "  What  brings  you  here  ? 
Why  do  you  choose  these  bare  walls,  this  hard  bed,  this 
meagre  fare  ? "  If  he  understands  himself  at  all,  and 
has  any  real  right  to  be  there  in  the  cloister,  his  answer 
is :  "I  love  them  for  two  reasons.  They  are  the  sym- 
bols of  my  repentance  for  my  sin.  They  suit  this  soul 
of  mine,  stripped  bare  of  aU  its  pride,  and  prostrate  in 
humility.  And  then,  besides,  they  help  this  new  life  of 
communion  with  my  Lord.  Through  their  blank  empti- 
ness the  highest  influences  may  come  in  to  me.  My 
soul  is  not  mufl[led  and  hidden  from  the  voice  and  touch 
of  God."  Both  as  a  symbol  of  repentance  and  as  a  means 
of  education  he  loves  his  dreary  cell 

Now  to  take  one  step  more,  if  what  this  monk's  ex- 
perience is  made  of  must,  in  some  form  or  other,  come  in 
the  life  of  every  growing  spiritual  man  ;  if  in  every  spir- 
itual advance  there  must  be  a  stripping  off  of  pride  and 
an  opening  of  the  nature  by  some  new  doors  to  some  new 
power;  then,  in  healthier  and  more  human  forms  no 
doubt,  but  still  the  same  essentially,  there  must  be  in 
every  aspiring  life  the  same  symbol  and  the  same  means 
which  he  has  in  his  cell.     No  man  can  be  a  better  man 


206  FASTING. 

save  as  his  pride  is  crushed  into  repentance ;  and  as  the 
swathing,  enwrapping  mass  of  passions  and  indulgences 
that  is  around  him  is  broken  tlirough,  so  that  God  can 
find  his  soul  and  pour  Himself  into  it.  There  is  no 
other  way.  You  want  to  be  a  better  man.  Perhaps 
you  cannot  remember  that  you  ever  wanted  it  before. 
You  have  gone  on,  self-satisfied  and  self-indulgent.  But 
at  last  this  new  wish  has  come  to  you.  Now,  what  have 
you  to  do  ?  Any  merest  tyro  in  the  spiritual  experience 
may  tell.  You  have  got  to  break  your  pride  all  to 
pieces  with  repentance  ;  and  you  have  got  to  say  to  these 
crowding  passions  of  yours  :  "  Stand  aside.  Leave  my 
soul  open,  that  it  and  God,  it  and  duty,  may  come  to- 
gether." Pride  and  passion  must  be  conquered.  That 
is  an  inward  struggle.  But  it  reaches  the  outward  life, 
and  in  the  voluntary  surrender  of  that  in  which  the 
pride  has  gloried  and  on  which  the  passions  have  fed 
there  is  the  symbol  of  the  humiliation  and  the  means  of 
the  new  life  of  the  soul.  Yes,  the  monk  was  all  wrong 
when  he  thought  that  there  was  merit  in  his  lonely  life, 
all  wrong  when  he  forgot  or  despised  the  rich  teachings 
and  helps  of  God  which  come  through  bounty  and  not 
through  poverty,  all  wrong  when,  trying  to  diet  his  soul, 
he  starved  it ;  but  let  not  our  brighter  religion,  our  joy 
in  all  of  God's  good  things,  make  us  forget  wherein  the 
monk  was  right,  in  his  earnest  fight  with  pride  and  pas- 
sion, and  in  his  earnest  desire  to  make  the  circumstances 
of  his  outward  life  his  ally  and  not  his  adversary  in  that 
fight.  That  is  the  redeeming  glory  which  often  illumi- 
nates the  inhuman  brutality  of  his  life,  and  makes  his 
cell-walls  glow  with  heroism. 

This,  then,  is  the  philosophy  of  fasting.     It  expresses 


FASTING.  207 

repentance,  and  it  uncovers  the  life  to  God.  "Come 
down,  my  pride ;  stand  back  my  passions ;  for  I  am 
wicked,  and  I  wait  for  God  to  bless  me."  That  is  what 
the  fasting  man  says.  You  see  what  I  mean  by  fasting. 
It  is  the  voluntary  disuse  of  anything  innocent  in  itself, 
with  a  view  to  spiritual  culture.  It  does  not  apply  to 
food  alone.  It  applies  to  everything  which  a  man  may 
desire.  A  man  may  fast  from  costliness  of  dress,  from 
sumptuous  houses,  from  exhilarating  company,  from 
music,  from  art,  considered  as  sensuous  delights.  There 
are  times  when  some  deep  experience,  some  profound 
humility  of  repentance,  rejects  them  all.  Not  they 
but  their  opposites  become  the  soul's  true  utterance. 
In  its  sorrow  for  its  sins,  all  sumptuousness  jars  upon  it. 
The  feast  and  the  feast's  music  are  out  of  place.  By 
emptiness  and  not  by  fulness  that  self-contempt,  that 
sense  of  the  vanity  of  the  spirit's  search  to  find  goodness 
in  itself,  must  be  expressed. 

Now  let  us  dwell  upon  these  two  in  order.  Let  us 
think  first  about  this  first  value  of  fasting  as  a  symbol 
It  expresses  the  abandonment  of  pride.  But  it  is  the 
characteristic  of  a  symbolic  action  that  it  not  merely  ex- 
presses but  increases  and  nourishes  the  feeling  to  which 
it  corresponds.  Laughter  is  the  symbol  of  joy,  but  as 
you  laugh  your  laughter  reacts  upon  the  joy  and 
heightens  it.  Tears  are  the  sign  of  sorrow,  but  they 
feed  themselves  the  sorrow  out  of  which  they  flow. 
Cheers  are  the  expression  of  enthusiasm,  but  as  the 
crowd  sends  up  its  shouts  its  zeal  deepens  and  glows 
the  brighter.  And  so  if  abstinence  is  the  sign  of  hu- 
mility, it  is  natural  enough  that  as  the  life  abstaiaaS 
from  its  ordinary  indulgences,  the  humiliation  which  is 


208  FASTING. 

SO  expressed  should  be  deepened  by  its  expression. 
Thus  the  symbol  becomes  also  a  means.  I  know  the 
dangers  to  which  this  idea  may  lead.  I  know  and  I 
dread  as  much  as  anybody  that  reversal  of  the  true  rela- 
tion which  begins  the  creation  of  feeling  at  the  outside, 
and  tries  to  make  the  heart  beat  by  mere  moving  of  the 
arms  and  opening  of  the  dead  lips.  But  with  all  its 
possible  misapplications  it  is  a  true  principle  still.  The 
utterance  of  an  emotion  increases  that  emotion.  The 
heart  once  beating,  the  outward  exercise  makes  it  beat 
the  more  truly.  And  so  it  is  no  artificial  thing,  nothing 
unreal  or  unnatural,  when  the  soul,  sorry  for  its  sins, 
ashamed  of  its  poor  bad  life,  lets  its  shame  utter  itself 
in  signs  of  humiliation,  and  finds  in  quick  and  sure 
reaction  the  shame  which  it  expresses  deepened  and 
strengthened  through  the  utterance  which  expresses  it. 
Take  it  all  to  yourself.  Suppose  that  something  some 
day  makes  that  real  to  you,  which  you  know  so  well 
now,  that  your  life,  made  for  a  more  than  angelic  purity, 
is  all  blotted  and  stained  with  sin.  Suppose  that  some 
day  that  awful  contrast  faces  you  which  changes  a  man's 
whole  thought  of  himself.  You  see  yourseK  and  you 
see  God.  Your  sin  stands  out  against  His  holiness ; 
your  darkness  against  His  perfection.  On  such  a  day 
as  that,  humbled  and  broken,  tell  me,  what  will  your 
outward  life  be  ?  Do  you  think  there  will  grow  up  in 
you  no  repugnance  to  your  easy  luxuriousness  ?  Will 
it  seem  well  and  fitting  that  an  inner  life  so  bruised 
and  shamed  should  be  carried  about  in  a  body  pampered 
and  decorated,  where  men  are  crowding,  where  lamps 
are  shining,  where  all  is  gay  and  has  no  touch  of  any- 
thing but  pleasure  ?     Something  so  different  from  that. 


FASTING.  209 

That  mortified,  bewildered  inner  life  wiU  claim  its  sym- 
bol. Solitude,  sHence,  soberness,  plainness  even  to 
meagreness,  will  seem  the  true  expression  of  its  new 
experience.  And  then  from  that  expression  of  it  there 
will  come  back  new  vividness  and  depth  into  the  experi- 
ence itseK;  and  the  soul  will  gather  a  new  humility  out 
of  the  circumstances  of  humiliation  which  it  has  already 
gathered  about  itself.  That  is  the  constant  reaction 
between  the  outer  and  the  inner  conditions.  That  is 
what  all  representative  dress  and  habits  mean.  The 
nun's  quietude,  the  priest's  purity,  the  mourner's  sor- 
row, the  bride's  joy,  the  soldier's  glory,  —  all  are  first 
uttered  and  then  deepened  by  the  garments  in  which 
they  are  severally  clothed.  First  you  give  the  emotion 
its  true  symbol  and  then  the  symbol  in  its  turn  gives 
new  strength  back  to  the  emotion. 

And  if  then  it  be  good  to  consecrate  some  special 
weeks  to  the  especial  recognition  of  the  experience,  it  is 
surely  good  likewise  to  put  the  expressive  and  educating 
symbol  into  those  weeks  too.  Lent  is  consecrated  to 
self-knowledge,  to  the  humbling  of  pride,  and  so  to  that 
fasting,  that  abstinence  and  soberness  of  life,  by  which 
the  soul's  humility  is  first  expressed  and  then  increased. 

And  then  let  us  pass  to  the  second  value  of  fasting, 
its  value  directly  as  a  means.  The  more  we  watch  the 
lives  of  men,  the  more  we  see  that  one  of  the  reasons 
why  men  are  not  occupied  with  great  thoughts  and  in- 
terests is  the  way  in  which  their  lives  are  overfilled  with 
little  things.  It  is  not  that  you  deliberately  dislike 
thought  and  study  and  benevolence.  It  is  mainly  that 
you  are  so  busy  with  amusement  and  society  and  idle- 
ness that  you  are  living  such  an  unprofitable  life.     It  is 

14 


210  FASTING. 

not  that  you  hate  your  soul  that  you  never  talk  with  it. 
It  is  that  your  body  lies  so  close  to  you  that  it  occupies 
all  your  thought.  It  is  not  that  you  despise  the  highest 
hopes  and  interests  of  your  immortal  nature  that  you 
neglect  them  so.  It  is  mainly  that  your  passions  crowd 
so  thick  about  you  that  you  are  entirely  occupied  with 
them.  It  is  no  untrue  picture  of  the  lives  of  many  of 
us  if  we  imagine  ourselves,  that  is,  our  wills,  standing 
in  the  centre ;  and  close  about  each  central  figure,  about 
each  man's  self,  a  crowd  of  clamorous  passions  and  eager 
lusts ;  while  away  outside  of  them  there  wait  in  larger 
circle  the  higher  claimants  of  our  time  and  powers, 
culture  and  truth  and  charity  and  religion,  with  all  their 
train.  This  self  stands  in  the  centre  listening  to  the 
passions  which  crowd  up  so  thick  about  it ;  worried 
and  restless  all  the  time  because,  though  it  cannot  see 
them,  it  is  always  conscious  of  that  outer  circle  of  more 
worthy  applicants.  It  hears  their  strong  remonstrance 
with  the  passions  which  are  shutting  them  out  from  the 
soul  that  belongs  to  them.  It  promises  itself  the  time 
when  aU  these  lower  claimants  shall  have  been  satisfied, 
and  shall  give  way  and  let  into  their  places  those  who 
are  more  worthy  than  themselves.  That  time  does  not 
come.  The  passions  crowd  and  clamor  as  noisily  as 
ever.  What  ought  to  come  to  pass  is  that  those  crowd- 
ing passions  should  feel  themselves  the  higher  dignity 
of  those  who  wait  behind  them  and  should  make  them- 
selves their  ministers,  and  urge  not  their  own  claims  but 
the  claims  which  surpass  their  own,  upon  the  central 
man.  If  they  will  not  do  that,  then  the  man  some- 
times puts  out  his  hand,  parts  and  pushes  aside  this 
clamorous  crowd,  these  physical  appetites,  these  secular 


FASTING.  211 

ambitions.  He  says  to  them  "  Stand  back,  and  at  least 
for  a  few  moments  let  me  hear  what  culture  and  truth 
and  charity  and  religion  have  to  say  to  my  soul."  Then 
up  through  the  emptiness  which  he  has  made  by  push- 
ing these  clamorers  back,  there  pours  the  rich  company 
of  higher  thoughts  and  interests,  and  they  gather  for  a 
time  around  the  soul  which  belongs  to  them  but  from 
which  they  have  been  shut  away.  By  and  by  the  old 
crowd  may  return.  The  passions  will  not  be  satisfied 
until  they  have  girdled  the  man's  life  once  more.  But 
even  when  they  hold  him  fastest  afterv/ards,  they  cannot 
but  remember  how  they  have  once  been  driven  back  ; 
they  cannot  be  as  contemptuous  as  they  used  to  be  of 
that  loftier  circle  of  influences  which  still  stands  outside 
of  them  ;  perhaps  some  time  or  other  they  may  come  to 
take  and  rejoice  in  their  true  place  as  interpreters  and 
messengers  through  which  the  power  of  these  higher 
influences  may  reach  the  soul.  That  is  the  story  of  the 
true  fast.  That  is  the  real  Lent.  It  is  the  putting  forth 
of  a  man's  hand  to  quiet  his  own  passions  and  to  push 
them  aside  that  the  higher  voices  may  speak  to  him 
and  the  higher  touches  fall  upon  him.  It  is  the  making 
of  an  emptiness  about  the  soul  that  the  higher  fulness 
may  fill  it.  It  may  be  temporary.  Once  more  the 
lower  needs  may  fasten  on  us,  the  lower  pleasures  try 
to  satisfy  us ;  but  they  never  can  be  quite  so  arbitrary 
and  arrogant  as  they  were,  after  they  have  once  had  to 
yield  to  their  superiors.  They  will  be  conscious  that 
the  soul  is  not  wholly  theirs.  Perhaps  some  day  they 
may  themselves  become,  and  dignify  themselves  by 
becoming,  the  meek  interpreters  and  ministers  of  those 
very  powers  which  they  once  shut  out  from  the  soul 


212  FASTING. 

A  man  whose  very  bodily  appetites  "brought  him  sug- 
gestions of  divinest  things,  whose  most  secular  life  had 
playing  freely  through  it  the  messages  of  God,  he  evi- 
dently would  need  no  fast,  no  interruption  of  those 
pressures  on  his  life  which,  with  whatever  worldly- 
seeming  hands  they  touched  him,  all  brought  him  in- 
fluences from  divinity.  There  wiU  be  no  fasting-days, 
no  Lent  in  heaven.  Not  because  we  shall  have  no 
bodies  there,  but  because  our  bodies  there  will  be  all 
open  to  God,  the  helps  and  not  the  hinderances  of 
spiritual  communication  to  our  souls. 

Do  you  remember  the  Collect  for  next  Sunday,  the 
first  Sunday  in  Lent  ?  —  "0  Lord,  who  for  our  sakes  didst 
fast  forty  days  and  forty  nights,  give  us  grace  to  use 
such  abstinence  that,  our  flesh  being  subdued  to  the 
Spirit,  we  may  ever  obey  Thy  godly  motives  in  right- 
eousness and  true  holiness,  to  Thy  honor  who  livest  and 
reignest  with  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  One  God, 
world  without  end.  Amen."  Wlien  we  pray  that  prayer 
next  Sunday  we  shall  begin  with  our  Master's  fasting, 
we  shall  remember  how  He  put  the  associations  and 
appetites  of  the  earth  aside  that  His  Father  might  come 
close  to  Him.  We  shall  pray  to  Him  then  to  help  us, 
too,  so  to  let  Spirit  in  where  flesh  is  now,  closest  to 
our  wills  and  selves,  that  hereafter  we  may  be  more 
full  of  spiritual  influences  always,  more  ready  to  do 
what  is  right  than  to  do  what  is  pleasant,  more  sensitive 
to  the  fear  of  God  than  to  the  fear  of  man.  Is  it  not 
indeed  a  noble  and  a  thorough  prayer  ?  How  earnest 
must  be  the  man  who  really  prays  it !  How  happy  is 
the  man  in  whom  it  really  is  fulfilled ! 

Suppose  you  go,  some  one  of  you  whose  life  is  all 


FASTING.  213 

external,  all  animal,  either  in  the  grosser  or  the  more  ele- 
gant ways,  —  suppose  you  go  to  some  lofty  or  beautiful 
thinker,  to  some  philosopher  or  poet,  and  you  say  to  him, 
"  Speak  to  me ;  tell  me  your  thought ;  make  me  the  sharer 
in  your  ideas  and  visions."  He  looks  into  your  face,  he 
sees  what  manner  of  man  you  are,  and  has  he  not  the 
perfect  right  to  answer  you,  "  I  cannot.  You  must  fast 
first.  Wrapped  round  with  soft  physical  indulgences, 
all  padded  an^  protected  as  you  are,  how  shall  I  strike 
into  your  muffled  intelligence  and  feeling  ?  You  must 
strip  these  coverings  off.  You  must  lay  bare  your 
pampered  life.  You  must  give  up  being  a  sybarite  or 
profligate.  You  must  make  me  an  avenue  through  this 
throng  of  lusts.  Then  I  can  come  to  you  and  you  can 
take  me  in  "  ?  It  is  not  arrogance.  He  cannot  speak  to 
you  until  you  open  the  way.  Your  frivolity  is  like  a 
solid  wall  about  you  and  you  must  break  it  down  before 
he  can  come  in.  That  is  why  fashionable  society  is 
neither  intellectual  nor  spiritual ;  why  any  man  or  woman 
must  break  its  chains  and  refuse  to  be  its  slave,  or  it  is 
impossible  to  come  to  the  best  culture  either  of  mind  or 
soul.  There  is  no  nobler  sight  anywhere  than  to  behold 
a  man  thus  quietly  and  resolutely  put  aside  the  lower 
that  the  higher  may  come  in  to  him.  Every  now 
and  then  a  conscience,  among  the  men  and  women  who 
live  easy  thoughtless  lives,  is  stirred,  and  some  one  looks 
up  anxiously,  holding  up  some  one  of  the  pretty  idle- 
nesses in  which  such  people  spend  their  days  and 
nights,  and  says  "  Is  this  wrong  ?  Is  it  wicked  to  do 
this  ? "  And  when  they  get  their  answer,  "  No,  certainly 
not  wicked,"  then  they  go  back  and  give  their  whole 
lives  up  to  doing  their  innocent  little  piece  of  useless- 


214  FASTING. 

ness  again.  Ah,  the  question  is  not  whether  that  is 
wicked,  whether  God  will  punish  you  for  doing  that. 
The  question  is  whether  that  thing  is  keeping  othei 
better  things  away  from  you ;  whether  behind  its  little 
bulk  the  vast  privilege  and  dignity  of  duty  is  hid  from 
you ;  whether  it  stands  between  God  and  your  soul.  If 
it  does,  then  it  is  an  offence  to  you,  and  though  it  be 
your  right  hand  or  your  right  eye,  cut  it  off,  pluck  it 
out,  and  cast  it  from  you.  The  advantage  and  joy  will 
be  not  in  its  absence,  for  you  will  miss  it  very  sorely, 
but  in  what  its  loss  reveals,  in  the  new  life  which  lies 
beyond  it,  which  you  will  see  stretching  out  and  tempt- 
ing you  as  soon  as  it  is  gone.  To  put  aside  everything 
that  hinders  the  highest  from  coming  to  us,  and  then  to 
call  to  us  that  highest  which,  nay.  Who  is  always  wait- 
ing to  come,  —  fasting  and  prayer,  —  this,  as  the  habit 
and  tenor  of  a  life,  is  noble.  As  an  occasional  effort 
even,  if  it  is  real  and  earnest,  it  makes  the  soul  freer 
for  the  future.  A  short  special  communion  with  the 
unseen  and  eternal,  prevents  the  soul  from  ever  being 
again  so  completely  the  slave  of  the  things  of  sense 
and  time. 

Have  we  not  then  understood  something  of  what  the 
essential  values  of  fasting  are  ?  It  is  both  a  symbol  and 
a  means.  Every  kind  of  abstinence  is  at  once  an 
expression  of  humility  and  an  opening  of  the  life. 
What  then  is  Lent  ?  Ah,  if  our  souls  are  sinful  and  are 
shut  too  close  by  many  worldlinesses  against  that  Lord 
who  is  their  life  and  Savior,  what  do  we  need  ?  Let  us 
have  the  symbols  which  belong  to  sin  and  to  repentance. 
Let  us  at  least  for  a  few  weeks,  among  the  many  weeks 
of  life,  proclaim  by  soberness  and  quietude  of  life  that 


FASTING,  215 

we  know  our  responsibility  and  how  often  we  have  been 
false  to  it.  Let  us  not  sweep  through  the  whole  year  in 
buoyant  exultation,  as  if  there  were  no  shame  upon  us, 
nothing  for  us  to  repent  of,  nothing  for  us  to  fear. 
By  some  small  symbols  let  us  bear  witness  that  we 
know  something  of  the  solemnity  of  living,  the  dread- 
fulness  of  sin,  the  struggle  of  repentance.  Our  symbols 
may  be  very  feeble,  our  sackcloth  may  be  lined  with 
silk  and  our  ashes  scented  with  the  juice  of  roses.  But 
let  us  do  something  which  shall  break  the  mere  moDot- 
ony  of  complacent  living  which  seems  to  be  forever  say- 
ing over  to  itself  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  sin,  that 
to  live  is  light  and  easy  work.  Perhaps  the  symbol  may 
strike  in  and  deepen  the  solemnity  which  it  expresses. 
Perhaps  as  we  tell  God  of  what  little  sorrow  for  our 
sins  we  have,  our  sorrow  for  our  sins  may  be  increased, 
and  while  we  stand  there  in  His  presence  the  fasting 
may  gather  a  truer  reality  of  penitence  behind  it. 

And  let  those  same  symbols  be  likewise  the  means 
of  opening  our  souls  to  Christ.  For  a  few  weeks  let 
these  obtrusive  worldlinesses  which  block  the  door  of 
our  hearts  stand  back ;  and  let  the  way  be  clear  that 
He  who  longs  to  enter  in  and  help  us  may  come  and 
meet  no  obstacle.  This  is  our  lenten  task.  "  If  any 
man  will  hear  My  voice  and  open  unto  Me,  I  will  come 
in  and  sup  with  him,"  says  Jesus.  To  still  the  clatter 
and  tumult  a  little  so  that  we  may  hear  His  voice,  and 
to  open  the  door  by  prayer,  that  is  the  privilege  and 
duty  of  these  coming  weeks. 

I  must  not  linger  to  draw  out  from  these  descriptions 
of  what  fasting  is,  the  methods  in  which  fasting  may  be 


216  FASTING. 

best  observed.  I  think  that  you  will  see  them  for  your- 
selves. I  am  sure  that  if  you  have  caught  what  I  have 
said,  you  will  not  think  that  they  are  anything  slight  or 
fantastic  or  rigid  or  mechanical.  It  is  the  utterance  of 
penitence  and  the  opening  of  doors  to  Christ.  It  must 
be  very  sacred ;  not  formal  but  alive  and  glorified  with 
motive.  It  must  be  very  personal ;  not  imitated  from 
any  pattern  but  the  utterance  of  each  man's  repentance 
and  love  and  hope  and  fear.  It  must  be  very  reason- 
able ;  not  unfitting  the  body  for  any  good  work  but  making 
it  a  more  and  more  perfect  instrument  for  the  soul. 

May  God  be  with  us  during  this  Lent.  May  we  be 
with  God.  I  dare  to  hope  that  there  shall  be  among  us 
much  of  that  fasting  which  our  Father  loves;  much 
penitence  for  sin  and  much  opening  of  long-shut  doors 
to  Christ.  0  my  dear  friends,  let  us  enter  into  it  with 
earnestness  that  we  may  come  out  of  it  with  joy ! 


XIII. 

A  WHITSUNDAY  SERMOK 

"And  they  said  unto  him:  We  have  not  so  much  as  heard  whether 
there  be  any  Holy  Ghost." — Acts  xix.  2. 

It  is  always  strange  to  us  to  find  other  people  entirely 
ignorant  of  what  makes  the  whole  interest  of  our  own 
life.  We  can  hardly  understand  how  it  is  possible  that 
men  should  live  along  year  after  year,  it  may  be  genera- 
tion after  generation,  knowing  nothing  about  what  really 
makes  life  for  us.  If  we  did  not  have  this  or  that  re- 
source we  should  die,  we  should  not  care  to  live.  Here 
is  a  man  who  has  it  not,  and  yet  his  life  seems  to  be 
worth  a  great  deal  to  him.  He  goes  on  bright  and  con- 
tented. Apply  this  to  your  love  of  reading.  What 
would  it  be  to  you  if  every  book  were  shut  ?  What 
would  you  do  if  all  communication  with  great  minds 
through  literature  were  broken  off,  if  all  the  stimulus 
which  comes  to  your  own  mind  were  stopped  ?  And 
yet  there  are  plenty  of  these  men  whom  you  meet  every 
day  who  never  open  a  book !  Or  take  the  exercise  of 
charity.  YoU  would  find  little  pleasure  in  life  perhaps 
if  you  were  shut  in  on  yourself  and  could  do  nothing 
for  anybody  else.  At  least  there  are  people  of  whom 
that  is  true.  To  find  some  one  whom  you  can  help,  and 
have  him  near  you  so  that  you  can  help  him,  is  as 
necessary  to  you  as  your  food  and  drink.     But  there 


218  A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

are  people  enough  who  seem  to  thrive  abundantly  with- 
out one  act  of  charity.  No  self-sacrifice  breaks  the 
smooth  level  of  their  selfish  days.  They  live  without 
that  which  is  your  very  life.  So  of  a  multitude  of 
things.  To  one  man  it  is  incredible  that  life  can  be 
worth  having  without  wealth ;  another  cannot  under- 
stand how  men  can  live  without  amusement ;  and  an- 
other, with  his  social  nature,  looks  at  his  friend  who 
lives  in  solitude,  and  wonders  how  and  why  he  lives 
at  all. 

But  nowhere  is  all  this  so  clear  as  in  the  matter  of 
religion.  One  who  is  really  living  a  religious  life,  one 
who  is  really  trying  to  serve  God,  who  is  loving  God 
and  believes  with  all  his  heart  that  God  loves  him,  who 
finds  all  through  his  daily  life  the  thick-sown  signs  that 
he  is  not  alone,  that  Christ  is  helping  him  and  saving 
him,  how  strange  and  almost  impossible  it  is  for  liim  to 
conceive  of  a  life  that  has  nothing  of  all  that  in  it. 
How  desolate  it  seems !  How  tame  it  looks  !  One 
man's  days  are  full  of  "joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  He  is 
always  looking  up  for  inspiration  and  always  receiving 
it.  When  he  wants  comfort  there  is  the  Comforter  close 
beside  him,  nay,  deep  within  him.  And  then  he  opens 
the  gate  into  some  brother's  life  and  learns  how  he  is 
living,  and  finds  that  there  is  nothing  at  all  there  of 
what  is  so  dear  to  himself.  That  brother  "  has  not  so 
much  as  heard  whether  there  be  any  Holy  Ghost." 

This  was  just  the  position  in  which  St.  Paul  found 
himself  at  Ephesus.  He  had  been  a  Christian  now  for 
many  years.  It  was  far  back  in  the  past,  the  time  when 
Jesus  had  appeared  to  him  at  mid-day  and  made  him 
His  disciple.     He  had  felt  the  powerful  aid  of  the  Holy 


A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON.  219 

Spirit  in  many  a  difficult  moment  of  his  life.  All  that 
he  did  and  said  was  in  the  confidence  and  by  the  help 
of  this  unseen  Friend  who  was  nearer  to  him  than  any 
of  his  closest  earthly  friends.  And  now  he  came  to 
Ephesus  where  there  were  some  people  who  called 
themselves  Christians,  and  looking  for  their  sympathy 
and  fellow-feeling  he  inquired,  "  Have  ye  received  the 
Holy  Ghost  since  ye  believed  ? "  And  they  said  unto 
him,  "  We  have  not  so  much  as  heard  if  there  be  any 
Holy  Ghost."  What  was  everything  to  him,  they  knew 
nothing  at  all  about.  No  wonder  that  his  soul  yearned 
over  them  and  he  stayed  with  them  and  taught  them. 
We  can  picture  his  joy  as  gradually  they  became  shar- 
ers in  his  happiness.  What  greater  joy  can  any  man 
desire  than  to  bring  any  other  man  who  has  known 
nothing  of  it  into  the  knowledge  and  the  power  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  ? 

This  is  our  subject  for  Whitsunday  morning.  What 
is  it  to  know  and  not  to  know  "  whether  there  be  any 
Holy  Ghost  ? "  Are  there  not  many  men  among  us 
who,  if  Paul  asked  them  the  old  question,  would  have 
to  give  the  old  Ephesian  answer  ?  "  Have  you  received 
the  Holy  Ghost,  my  friend  ? "  Be  honest,  and  must 
you  not  answer  as  they  answered,  "  Indeed  I  have  not 
so  much  as  heard  whether  there  be  any  Holy  Ghost. 
The  name  indeed  has  sounded  in  my  ears ;  but  as  a  real 
person  I  have  not  got  any  true  idea  of  His  existence  ?  " 
Indeed  the  element  of  personal  experience  is  so  in- 
volved with  all  our  knowledge  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  that 
for  any  man  to  say  "Yes,  I  know  Him,"  is  a  vastly 
profounder  acknowledgment  than  the  statement  of  any 
other  knowledge.     That  is  the  reason  why  it  is  often  so 


220  A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

vague  and  hesitating ;  but  just  for  the  same  reason  there 
comes  a  time  when  a  man  certain  of  his  experience  can 
say  "  Yes,  I  have  received,  I  do  know  the  Holy  Spirit " 
with  a  certainty  and  distinctness  with  which  he  cannot 
lay  claim  to  the  knowledge  of  any  other  thing  or 
person. 

In  order  to  understand  our  question  let  us  turn  to 
this  story  of  the  Ephesians.  They  were  Christian  be- 
lievers. They  are  called  "disciples."  They  had  been 
baptized  after  the  baptism  of  John.  They  believed 
Christian  truth  and  they  accepted  Christian  duty.  They 
had  a  knowledge  of,  a  faith  in  Christ,  but  they  had  no 
knowledge  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  perception  of  a 
present  God  who  should  fill  out  belief  in  truth  with 
personal  apprehension,  and  who  should  make  duty  de- 
lightful by  personal  love,  this  they  had  not  reached ;  no 
one  had  told  them  of  it. 

It  was  a  strange  condition.  It  is  not  easy  to  recon- 
cile it  with  many  of  our  Christian  notions,  but  yet  it  is 
a  condition  which  represents  the  state  of  many  people 
whom  we  know,  who  seem  to  have  just  what  they  had 
and  to  be  lacking  in  just  what  they  wanted.  I  suppose 
a  man  —  and  it  is  not  all  a  supposition,  the  specimens 
are  all  around  us  —  who  believes  the  Christian  truths. 
That  there  is  a  God  who  made  and  governs  everjlhing, 
that  this  God  has  revealed  Himself  in  Jesus  Christ, 
that  He  has  lived  and  taught  among  men,  and  that  at 
last  He  died  for  men  in  all  the  torture  of  the  cross,  and 
rose  out  of  the  grave  in  all  the  inherent  power  of  His 
immortality,  —  this  they  believe.  And  all  that  God 
requires,  all  that  Christ  commanded,  they  accept.  The 
duties  of  a  good  life,  purity,  honesty,  resignation,  self- 


A   WHITSUNDAY   SERMON.  221 

denial,  all  of  these  they  acknowledge.  They  try  to  do 
these  duties.  Their  lives  are  often  wonderful  with  the 
severe  and  lofty  standards  that  they  set  themselves. 
They  work  heroically  to  fulfd  the  Master's  wiU.  Do 
we  not  know  such  men  ?  They  often  puzzle  us.  The 
aim  of  all  their  life  is  high.  Perhaps  as  I  describe 
them  you  know  that  you  are  such  a  man  yourself.  You 
know  that  Christ  is  the  great  Master.  His  truth  and 
His  commandments  you  receive.  But  all  the  time  you 
know  that  something  is  lacking,  —  a  vividness,  a  life, 
a  spring,  a  hopefulness  and  courage  which  you  hear  of 
other  people  having,  which  you  sometimes  see  suggested 
in  the  things  you  do,  which  you  seem  to  be  often  just 
upon  the  verge  of,  but  which  after  all  you  do  not  get, 
and  for  the  lack  of  which  you  are  forever  conscious  of  a 
certain  dryness  in  your  belief  and  a  certain  shallowness 
in  your  duty.  What  is  it  that  you  lack  ?  This  lack 
which,  if  I  speak  to  your  consciousness  at  all,  you  recog- 
nize, this  something  which  you  want,  I  take  to  be  pre- 
cisely the  Holy  Spirit.  I  do  not  know  any  other  way 
in  which  He  can  become  so  real  to  a  true,  earnest  man, 
as  in  the  realization  of  just  this  want. 

Let  us  separate  the  two  departments  to  which  I  have 
referred,  and  speak  more  particularly,  first  of  Belief  and 
then  of  Duty.  We  have  aU  been  familiar  all  our  lives 
with  the  distinction  between  head-belief  and  heart-be- 
lief. We  have  been  taught,  sometimes  in  such  a  way 
that  it  puzzles  us,  sometimes  in  such  a  way  that  it  was 
confirmed  by  all  our  deepest  experience,  that  simply  to 
know,  even  with  the  most  unquestioning  conviction,  that 
certain  things  were  true,  was  not  really  having  faith  in 
thpse  things.     We  go  up  to  the  very  limit  of  the  belief 


222  A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

that  can  come  either  by  traditional  acceptance  or  by  the 
conviction  which  argument  produces,  and  there  we 
stand.  We  cannot  advance  one  step  farther.  We  seem 
to  have  exhausted  all  the  power  that  is  in  us.  But  we 
are  sure  that  out  beyond  there  is  a  region  which,  though 
we  cannot  enter  it,  is  real,  and  is  the  true  completion  of 
the  region  through  which  we  have  already  travelled. 

How  familiar  this  is  in  our  dealings  with  our  friends ! 
I  meet  a  man  whom  I  have  heard  of  long.  Every 
authority  in  which  I  trust  has  told  me  that  that  man  is 
wise  and  good.  I  come  to  know  him  well,  and  for  my- 
self I  see  the  evidence  of  his  wisdom  and  goodness.  He 
proves  it  to  me  by  the  things  he  does.  I  no  more  doubt 
it  than  I  doubt  the  sun.  I  say  that  I  believe  in  him 
and  I  do  believe  in  him ;  but  all  the  time  I  am  aware 
that  out  beyond  the  limit  of  this  belief  which  I  have 
reached  and  on  which  I  stand,  there  is  a  whole  new 
country,  the  region  of  another  sort  of  belief  in  him  into 
which  I  have  not  entered,  where  if  I  could  enter  for  an 
hour  everything  would  be  different  and  new.  I  may 
be  helpless.  I  may  not  be  able  to  drag  my  feet  across 
the  border.  I  may  stand  as  if  chained  by  magic  on  this 
line  which  separates  the  head's  belief  from  the  heart's 
confidence  and  trust ;  but,  powerless  as  I  may  be  to  enter 
it,  I  know  that  all  this  other  world  is  there,  with  the 
mists  hanging  over  it  and  hiding  it,  but  real  and  certain 
still,  the  land  of  personal  friendship  and  communion. 

And  just  the  same  is  true  of  truths.  I  know  that 
some  great  truth  is  true ;  our  human  immortality,  let 
us  say.  Every  one  whom  I  trust  has  told  me  so.  Those 
whose  words  are  to  me  like  gospel  have  assured  me  of 
it.     I  may  even  hear  and  believe  that  voice  that  speaks 


A  WHITSUNDAY  SERMON.  223 

out  of  eternity  itself.  I  may  put  full  trust  in  the  word 
of  Christ  which  tells  me  that  the  dead  are  not  dead  but 
are  living  still.  And  my  reason  may  be  all  convinced. 
I  may  be  persuaded  by  every  natural  argument  that  the 
soul  does  not  perish  in  its  separation  from  the  body,  but 
goes  on  in  its  unbroken  life.  All  this  I  steadfastly  be- 
lieve. But  what  then  ?  Here  I  stand  upon  this  clear 
sharp  line.  I  am  immortal.  I  say  it  over  to  myself 
and  know  that  it  is  true.  But  still  I  am  not  satisfied. 
This  certainty  of  immortality  is  nothing  to  me  but  a 
mere  conviction.  I  get  nothing  out  of  it.  It  does  not 
flow  up  into  my  duties  and  experiences.  I  am  not 
stronger  for  it.  I  have  not  taken  hold  of  it,  nor  has  it 
taken  hold  of  me.  And,  until  this  comes  to  pass,  I  feel 
a  sense  of  incompleteness.  I  know  in  all  my  surest 
moments  that  there  is  an  assurance  which  I  have  not 
reached.  I  know  when  my  feet  are  planted  the  firmest 
on  the  outmost  line  of  rational  conviction  that  there  is 
beyond  that  line  a  region  of  spiritual  confidence  which 
I  have  not  entered. 

Here  then  are  the  two  kinds  of  belief  in  persons  and 
in  truths.  What  is  the  difference  between  them  ?  The 
first  is  clear,  definite,  and  strong.  I  know  that  he  whom 
I  believe  in,  be  it  man  or  God,  is  true  and  good.  I 
know  that  the  truth  that  I  accept  is  certain  and  impreg- 
nable. But  there  is  something  hard,  dry,  literal,  about 
my  faith.  I  can  write  it  all  down  and  say  all  that  I 
know  about  it  in  letters  inscribed  upon  a  book.  I  may 
contend  for  it  vigorously,  but  I  do  not  feed  upon  it. 
The  other  belief  has  in  it  just  what  this  belief  lacks.  It 
has  spirit.  I  cannot  write  it  down  in  letters.  My 
heart  is  full  of  it  and  it  takes  me  right  into  the  heart  of 
the  Being  or  the  truth  that  I  believe  in. 


224  A   WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

Surely  this  difference  is  very  clear.  Surely  we  all 
know  well  enough  that  struggle  after  the  heart  and 
spirit  of  what  our  minds  have  accepted,  which  lets  us 
understand  it  all.  How  often  we  have  felt  that  disheart- 
ening certainty  that  we  are  holding  tight  the  shells,  the 
mere  outside  of  our  richest  beliefs,  and  not  getting  at 
their  soul  and  life.  Sometimes  have  we  not  contended 
earnestly  for  our  faith  and  told  some  unbeliever  that  he 
was  losing  precious  truth  because  he  did  not  hold  it, 
and  then  gone  off  from  our  discussion  saying  to  our- 
selves gloomily,  "  Yes,  it  is  all  true,  but  still,  if  he  held 
it  only  on  the  outside  as  I  do,  would  he  be  so  much 
richer  after  all  ? "  How  often  do  we  seem  to  ourselves 
to  be  like  starving  men,  holding  fruits  that  we  know 
are  rich  and  nutritious  within,  but  cased  in  iron  rinds 
which  no  pressure  of  ours  is  strong  enough  to  break. 

We  are  then  very  often  where  these  Ephesians  were. 
What  came  to  them  and  saved  them  was  the  Holy 
Spirit.  What  must  come  to  us  and  save  us  is  the  same 
Holy  Spirit.  There  they  were  holding  certain  truths 
about  God  and  Jesus,  holding  them  drearily  and  coldly, 
with  no  life  and  spirit  in  their  faith,  Paul  came  to  them 
and  said,  "  These  truths  are  true,  but  they  are  divine 
truths.  You  can  really  see  them  only  as  you  are  shar- 
ers in  divinity  yourself,  and  look  at  them  with  eyes 
enlightened  by  the  intelligence  of  God.  God  nmst  come 
into  you  and  change  you.  His  Spirit  must  come  into 
you  and  occupy  you ;  and  then,  looking  with  His  Spirit, 
you  shall  see  the  spirit  of  the  truths  you  look  at ;  full 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  ghost,  the  heart,  the  soul  of  these 
great  verities  shall  open  itself  in  all  its  holiness  to  you. 
You  shall  see  Jesus.    You  shall  lay  hold  on  immortality 


A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON.  225 

not  on  the  outside  but  on  the  inside,  in  the  very  heart 
and  spirit.  Is  not  this  intelligible,  my  dear  friends  ? 
If  Eaphael  could  enter  into  you  as  you  stand  before  his 
picture,  would  you  not  see  deeper  than  you  do  now  ? 
Would  not  the  Eaphael  in  the  picture  come  out  from 
depths  which  you  have  never  fathomed  ?  If  a  child  can 
be  filled  with  the  father's  spirit,  will  not  the  spirit  of 
the  household,  the  intention,  the  purpose  of  it  all,  come 
out  from  the  hard  skeleton  of  its  structure  to  meet  the 
new  spiritual  apprehension  ?  And  so  if  you  can  be 
filled  with  God,  will  not  the  soul  of  God's  truth  of  every 
sort,  as  you  stand  face  to  face  with  it,  open  to  you  deeper 
and  deeper  depths,  changing  your  belief  into  a  more  and 
more  profound  and  spiritual  thing  ? 

This  was  what  Paul  prayed  for  and  this  was  what 
came  to  those  Ephesians.  God  the  Holy  Spirit  came 
into  them  and  then  their  old  belief  opened  into  a  dif- 
ferent belief ;  then  they  really  believed.  Do  you  ask 
what  we  mean  by  that  ?  Do  you  insist  on  knowing  in 
exact  statement  how  God  entered  into  these  people  ? 
Ah,  if  you  ask  that,  you  must  ask  in  vain.  If  you  in- 
sist upon  not  receiving  God  until  you  know  how  His 
life  comes  to  your  life,  you  must  go  on  godless  forever. 
You  must  know  more  than  you  do  know,  more  than  any 
man  knows,  of  what  man  is  and  what  God  is  and  what 
are  the  mysterious  channels  that  run  from  one  life  into 
the  other,  before  you  can  tell  how  God  flows  into  man 
and  fills  him  with  Himself  Tell  me,  if  you  can,  the 
real  nature  of  your  friend's  influence,  the  inflow  of  his 
life  on  yours  that  makes  you  full  of  him.  Only  one 
thing  I  think  we  can  know  about  this  filling  of  man  by 
God,  this  communication  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  that  it  is 


226  A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

natural  and  not  unnatural,  that  it  is  a  restoral  of  corn* 
munication,  that  it  is  a  reenthronement  of  God  where 
He  belongs,  that  the  prayer  which  invokes  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  the  breaking  down  of  an  artificial  barrier,  and 
the  letting  in  of  the  flood  of  divine  life  to  flow  where  it 
belongs,  in  channels  that  were  made  for  it.  If  we 
know  this,  then  the  occupation  of  man's  life  by  God  is 
simply  a  final  fact.  It  is  just  like  the  occupation  of  the 
body  by  the  soul.  No  man  can  tell  how  it  is ;  but  that 
it  is,  is  testified  by  every  form  of  human  strength  and 
beauty  in  which  our  eyes  delight. 

Pause  then  a  moment  and  think  what  Whitsunday 
was,  the  first  Whitsunday.  We  read  the  story  of  the 
miracle.  We  hear  the  rushing  of  the  mighty  wind  and 
see  the  cloven  tongues  of  fire  quivering  above  the  heads 
of  the  apostles.  Perhaps  we  cannot  understand  it.  It 
seems  natural  enough  that  when  Jesus  is  bom  the  sky 
should  open  and  the  angels  sing ;  that  when  Jesus  dies 
the  skies  should  darken  and  the  rocks  should  break. 
The  great  events  were  worthy  of  those  miracles,  or 
greater.  But  here  at  Pentecost  what  was  there  to  call 
out  such  prodigies  ?  If  what  we  have  said  is  true,  was 
there  not  certainly  enough  ?  It  was  the  coming  back 
of  God  into  man.  It  was  the  promise  in  these  typical 
men  of  how  near  God  would  be  to  every  man  henceforth. 
It  was  the  manifestation  of  the  God  Inspirer  as  distinct 
from  and  yet  one  with  the  God  Creator  and  the  God 
Eedeemer.  It  was  primarily  the  entrance  of  God  into 
man  and  so,  in  consequence,  the  entrance  of  its  spirit 
and  full  meaning  into  every  truth  that  man  could  know. 
It  was  the  blossom-day  of  humanity,  fuU  of  the  promise 
of  unmeasured  fruit. 


A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON.  227 

And  what  that  first  Whitsunday  was  to  all  the  world, 
one  certain  day  becomes  to  any  man,  the  day  when  the 
Holy  Spirit  comes  to  him.  God  enters  into  him  and 
he  sees  all  things  with  God's  vision.  Truths  which 
were  dead  spring  into  life  and  are  as  real  to  him  as  they 
are  to  God.  He  is  filled  with  the  Spirit  and  straightway 
he  believes ;  not  as  he  used  to,  coldly  holding  the  out- 
sides  of  things.  He  has  looked  right  into  their  hearts. 
His  belief  in  Jesus  is  all  afire  with  love.  His  belief  in 
immortality  is  eager  with  anticipation.  Can  any  day 
in  all  his  life  compare  with  that  day  ?  If  it  were  to 
break  forth  into  flames  of  fire  and  tremble  with  sudden 
and  mysterious  wind,  would  it  seem  strange  to  him  — 
the  day  when  he  first  knew  how  near  God  was,  and  how 
true  truth  was,  and  how  deep  Christ  was  ?  0  have  we 
known  that  day  ?  0,  careless,  easy,  cold  believers !  if 
one  should  come  and  ask  you,  "  Have  you  received  the 
Holy  Ghost  since  you  believed  ? "  dare  you,  could  you, 
answer  him,  "  Yes  "  ? 

Let  us  take  now  a  few  moments  to  consider  the  other 
part  of  the  Holy  Spirit's  influence,  the  way  in  which, 
when  He  enters  into  a  soul.  He  not  merely  gives  clear- 
ness to  truth,  but  gives  delight  and  enthusiastic  impulse 
to  duty.  These  Ephesians  had  not  merely  believed 
much  Christian  truth,  they  had  been  trying  also  to  do 
what  was  right ;  they  had  accepted  the  Christian  law 
so  far  as  they  knew  it.  We  can  think  of  them  as  very 
patient,  persevering  workers,  struggling  to  do  everything 
that  they  were  told  they  ought  to  do.  Now  what  did 
Paul  do  for  them  here  when  he  brought  them  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  Holy  Spirit  ?     I  think  the  answer  will  be 


228  A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

found  in  that  verse  of  the  Savior's  in  which  He  described 
what  the  Holy  Spirit's  work  should  be.  "  He  shall  take 
of  mine  and  shall  show  it  unto  you,"  Jesus  had  said. 
The  work  of  the  Spirit  was  to  make  Jesus  vividly  real 
to  men.  What  he  did  then  for  any  poor  Ephesian  man 
or  woman  who  was  toiling  away  in  obedience  to  the 
law  of  Christianity,  was  to  make  Christ  real  to  the  toiling 
soul  behind  and  in  the  law.  He  took  the  laborer  there 
in  Ephesus  who  only  knew  that  it  was  a  law  of  Chris- 
tianity that  he  ought  to  help  his  brethren,  and  made  it 
as  personal  a  thing,  as  really  the  wish  of  Christ  that  he 
should  help  his  brethren,  as  it  had  been  to  the  twelve  dis- 
ciples when  they  were  living  under  Christ's  eye,  while  he 
was  with  them  in  Judea  or  while  they  were  distributing 
the  bread  and  fish  at  his  command  to  the  hungry  men 
by  the  sea  of  Galilee.  This  was  the  change  which  the 
Holy  Spirit  made  in  Duty.  He  filled  it  with  Christ,  so 
that  every  laborer  had  the  strength,  the  courage,  the  in- 
citement to  fidelity  which  comes  from  working  for  one 
whom  the  worker  knows  and  loves. 

And  very  often  when  our  tasks  are  pressing  on  us  is 
not  this  the  change  we  need  ?  Your  Christian  duties, 
the  prayers  you  pray,  the  self-denials  that  you  practise, 
the  charities  you  give, — what  is  the  matter  with  them  ? 
The  temptations  you  resist,  the  good  word  that  you 
speak  to  some  brother,  the  way  you  teach  your  class, 
the  way  you  condemn  some  prevailing  sin,  —  what  is  the 
matter  with  them  all  ?  What  is  the  reason  why  they  are 
so  dull  and  tame  ?  Why  are  they  not  strong  enthusiastic 
work  ?  The  reason  must  be  that  there  is  no  clear  per- 
son for  whom  you  do  these  things.  You  serve  yourself, 
and  how  clear  you  are  to  yourself;  and  so,  what  life 


A  WHITSUNDAY   SERMON.  229 

there  is  in  every  act  of  your  own  service ;  but  you  serve 
Christ  and  how  dim  He  has  grown  !  and  so,  how  list- 
lessly the  hands  move  at  His  labor !  Now  if  the  Holy 
Spirit  can  indeed  bring  Him  clearly  to  you,  is  not  the 
Holy  Spirit  what  you  need  ?  And  this  is  just  exactly 
what  He  does.  I  find  a  Christian  who  has  really  "  re- 
ceived the  Holy  Ghost,"  and  what  is  it  that  strikes  and 
delights  me  in  him  ?  It  is  the  intense  and  intimate  re- 
ality of  Christ.  Christ  is  evidently  to  him  the  clearest 
person  in  the  universe.  He  talks  to  Christ.  He  dreads 
to  offend  Christ.  He  delights  to  please  Christ.  His 
whole  life  is  light  and  elastic  with  this  buoyant  desire 
of  doing  everything  for  Jesus,  just  as  Jesus  would  wish 
it  done.  So  simple,  but  so  powerful !  So  childlike,  but 
so  heroic  !  Duty  has  been  transfigured.  The  weariness, 
the  drudgery,  the  whole  task-nature,  has  been  taken 
away.  Love  has  poured  like  a  new  life-blood  along  the 
dry  veins,  and  the  soul  that  used  to  toil  and  groan  and 
struggle  goes  now  singing  along  its  way,  "  The  life  that 
I  now  live  in  the  flesh,  I  live  by  the  faith  of  the  Son 
of  God  who  loved  me  and  gave  Himself  for  me." 

0  my  dear  friends,  have  you  received  the  Holy  Ghost 
since  you  believed  ?  Since  you  began  to  do  your  duty 
has  any  revelation  come  to  you  of  Him  who  is  the  Lord 
of  duty  ?  Have  you  caught  any  sight  of  Christ,  and  be- 
gun to  know  what  it  is  to  do  it  all  for  Him  ?  Has  the 
love  with  which  He  lived  and  died  for  you  been  so 
brought  home  to  you  that  you  are  longing  only  to  thank 
Him  by  a  grateful  and  obedient  life  ?  Have  you  so 
made  Him  yours  that  He  has  made  you  His  ?  If  so, 
the  life  of  heaven  has  begun  for  you.  Only  to  know 
Him  more  and  more  forever  and  so  to  grow  into  com- 


230  A   WHITSUNDAY   SERMON. 

pleter  and  completer  service,  there  is  your  eternity  al- 
ready marked  out  before  you.  It  stretches  out  and  is 
lost  beyond  where  you  can  see ;  but  it  all  stretches  in 
the  one  direction  in  which  your  face  is  set ;  deepening 
knowledge,  bringing  deeper  love,  forever  opening  into 
more  and  more  faithful  service.  Go  on  into  the  richest 
developments  of  that  life,  led  by  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

Both  in  belief  and  in  duty  then,  this  is  the  work  of 
.the  Holy  Spirit;  to  make  belief  profound  by  showing 
/  us  the  hearts  of  the  things  that  we  believe  in ;  and  to 
make  duty  delightful  by  setting  us  to  doing  it  for  Christ. 
0,  in  this  world  of  shallow  believers  and  weary,  dreary 
workers,  how  we  need  that  Holy  Spirit !  Eemember,  we 
may  go  our  way,  ignoring  all  the  time  the  very  forces 
that  we  need  to  help  us  do  our  work.  The  forces  still 
may  help  us.  The  Holy  Spirit  may  help  us,  will  surely 
help  us,  just  as  far  as  He  can,  even  if  we  do  not  know 
His  name  or  ever  call  upon  Him.  But  there  is  so  much 
more  that  He  might  do  for  us  if  we  would  only  open 
our  hearts  and  ask  Him  to  come  into  them.  Eemember, 
He  is  God,  and  God  is  love.  And  no  man  ever  asks 
God  to  come  into  his  heart  and  holds  his  heart  open  to 
God,  without  God's  entering.  Children,  on  this  Whit- 
sunday pray  the  dear  God,  the  blessed  Holy  Spirit,  to 
come  and  live  in  your  heart  and  show  you  Jesus,  and 
make  you  love  to  do  what  is  right  for  His  sake.  Old 
men,  aspire  to  taste  already  here  what  is  to  be  the  life 
and  joy  of  your  eternity.  Men  and  women  in  the  thick 
of  life,  do  not  go  helpless  when  there  is  such  help  at 
hand ;  do  not  go  on  by  yourselves,  struggling  for  truth 


A  WHITSUNDAY  SERMON.  231 

and  toiling  at  your  work,  when  the  Holy  Spirit  is  wait- 
ing to  show  you  Christ,  and  to  give  you  in  Him  the 
profoundness  of  faith  and  the  delightfulness  of  duty. 

Let  us  come  to  Christ's  Communion  Table  and  cele- 
brate our  union  with  Him  and  with  one  another,  put- 
ting aU  fear  and  selfishness  aside,  and  praying  Him  to 
show  us  there  how  rich  a  thing  it  is  to  believe  in  Him 
and  how  sweet  a  thing  it  is  to  serve  Him  by  His  Holy 
Spirit. 


XIV. 

CHRIST  THE  FOOD   OF   MAN. 

"The  Jews  therefore  strove  among  themselves,  saying  :  How  can  this 
man  give  us  his  flesh  to  eat  ?  "  —  John  vi.  52. 

Any  one  who  suddenly  came  upon  a  group  of  eagerly- 
disputing  men  and  overheard  this  question,  unconnected, 
by  itself,  would  see  at  once  that  he  needed  something 
more  before  he  could  understand  it,  that  it  must  have  a 
history ;  and  if  it  interested  him  at  all  he  would  in- 
quire how  such  a  strange  question  came  to  be  asked. 
The  answer  would  be  this  :  Yesterday,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  Jesus  of  Nazareth  worked  a  mir- 
acle, and  fed  a  crowd  of  five  thousand  men  with  five 
loaves  of  bread  and  two  little  fishes.  During  the  night 
He  crossed  the  lake.  In  the  morning  the  people  found 
that  He  was  gone,  and  they  took  boats  and  followed  Him. 
When  He  saw  them,  He  told  them  that  He  was  afraid 
they  had  come  after  Him  not  for  His  own  sake,  not 
because  they  loved  or  honored  Him,  but  because  they 
wanted  another  miracle  and  more  bread.  Then  He 
goes  on  to  tell  them  that  the  food  they  really  need  is 
food  for  the  soul,  not  for  the  body.  Then  He  offers 
them  Himself  as  their  Savior,  their  Master,  their  nour- 
ishment, their  strength.  And  finally,  led  on  into  the 
strong  figure  by  the  first  event  which  started  his  dis- 
course, the  flocking  of  the  people  after  food.  He  makes 


CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  233 

this  singular  and  impressive  announcement :  "  I  am  the 
living  bread  that  came  down  from  heaven ;  if  any  man 
eat  of  this  bread,  he  shall  live  for  ever ;  and  the  bread 
which  I  shall  give  is  My  flesh,  which  I  will  give  for  the 
life  of  the  world."  Then  came  the  question,  tossed 
back  and  forth  among  the  debating  Jews,  "  How  can 
this  man  give  us  his  flesh  to  eat  ? " 

From  this  simple  sketch  we  can  see  that  the  discourse 
which  the  question  interrupted  was  one  of  the  most  pro- 
foundly spiritual  and  solemn.  The  nurture  of  the  soul 
of  man  by  the  communicated  life  of  God,  that  is  what 
Christ  is  talking  of  Earth  and  man  seem  to  lie  open  in 
their  need,  with  all  their  ordinary  concealments  stripped 
away ;  heaven  and  God  are  open  in  their  readiness  to 
supply.  All  reserve  is  broken  and  the  power  of  life,  the 
manifested  mercy  of  God,  is  offering  itself  to  the  want  of 
man.  In  the  very  midst  of  this  sacred  offer  comes  in  this 
question  which  at  first  only  chills  us  and  casts  us  back : 
"  How  can  this  man  give  us  his  flesh  to  eat  ?  "  We 
have  been  so  carried  on  by  the  speaker's  spirit  that  we 
have  been  ready  to  accept  anything.  The  special  form 
in  which  He  clothed  His  offer  has  not  staggered  us. 
We  have  not  stopped  to  analyze  it,  hardly  to  notice  it. 
But  here  are  some  cooler  or  more  captious  Jews ;  nay, 
perhaps  some  Jews  who,  being  more  anxiously  in  earnest, 
do  criticise  and  weigh  every  word  in  which  the  offer 
comes,  and  to  them  this  form  seems  so  strange  as  to  be 
unintelligible,  and  so  we  begin  to  hear  the  murmur 
drifting  round,  "  How  can  this  man  give  us  his  flesh  to 
eat  ? " 

What  was  the  spirit  of  the  question  ?  I  have  just 
suggested  that  there  are  different  spirits  in  which  it 


234  CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF  MAN. 

might  be  asked.  There  are  two  ways  in  which  you  may 
assent  to  any  statement  that  you  hear.  You  may  not 
care  much  about  it,  and  merely  say  "  Yes "  to  it  be- 
cause it  does  not  interest  you  enough  to  make  you  criti- 
cise it  at  all.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  you  may  go  down 
to  the  very  bottom  of  it  and  believe  it  true  with  all 
your  heart.  And  so  there  are  two  ways  of  questioning 
a  statement,  the  superficial  and  the  profound,  the  flip- 
pant and  the  earnest  way.  One  man  asks  questions 
because  he  wants  to  prove  the  announcement  false. 
Another  man  asks  because  he  longs  to  see  it  prove  itself 
true.  There  is  the  arrogant  and  wanton  objector ;  and 
there  is  the  eager  questioner  who  so  dearly  loves  the 
vision  which  the  words  he  has  just  heard  have  raised  be- 
fore his  mind  that  he  hardly  dares  to  ask  about  it  lest  he 
should  lose  it,  but  yet  who  must  ask  because  it  is  too 
dear  to  be  left  in  doubt.  Both  of  these  must  have  been 
present  in  the  crowd  which  heard  the  words  of  Christ. 
Hence  came  the  strife.  One  man  said  "  I  believe  it," 
and  you  saw  as  he  spoke  that  he  had  thought  deeply 
and  been  deeply  touched  and  really  did  understand  and 
believe.  Another  said  "  Yes,  I  believe  it,"  and  you  saw 
that  he  was  a  merely  thoughtless  partisan  admirer  of 
Christ,  not  having  reached  any  true  comprehension  of 
his  Master  and  not  knowing  what  he  was  talking  about. 
Another  said  "  How  can  it  be  ? "  and  his  "  How  can  it 
be  ? "  evidently  meant  "  It  shall  not  be  if  I  can  help 
it."  Another  said  "  How  can  it  be  ? "  and  you  saw  his 
face  all  wistful  as  he  spoke,  as  if  he  said  "  It  sounds 
like  what  I  want.  O,  if  I  could  only  see  just  what  He 
means  and  get  hold  of  the  truth  and  strength  which  I 
am  sure  there  is  in  what  He  says !     It  eludes  me,  but 


CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  235 

I  am  sure  that  it  is  there.  How  can  it  be  ? "  These 
were  all  present  in  the  crowd. 

Now  let  us  leave  the  company  which  was  assembled 
on  the  shore  of  Gennesaret  and  come  down  to  our  own 
time  and  place.  Still  men  are  striving  among  them- 
selves with  the  old  question.  Still  the  earnest  believer, 
the  flippant  partisan,  the  captious  objector,  and  the  wist- 
ful inquirer,  are  busy  with  these  words  of  Christ.  These 
words  have  kept  their  hold  upon  the  world.  Now,  just 
as  then,  they  are  not  words  to  be  ignored.  Men  will 
ask  what  they  mean.  Men  are  asking  one  another ;  nay, 
souls  are  divided  within  themselves  and  do  not  know 
how  to  think  in  seeking  the  answer  to  that  old  ques- 
tion, "  How  can  this  man  give  us  His  flesh  to  eat  ? " 

What  answer  can  we  give  ?  To  the  captious  objector, 
in  this  as  in  every  other  question  concerning  Christ 
there  is  no  answer  really  to  be  given.  If  a  man  wishes 
to  find  the  religion  of  Christ  untrue  and  asks  you  ques- 
tions about  it  with  the  distinct  desire  of  convicting  your 
Master  of  folly  or  of  fraud,  then  there  is  simply  nothing 
for  you  to  do  but  to  turn  off  from  him  and  go  your 
way ;  not  angrily,  not  with  any  idea  of  punishing  him 
for  his  obstinacy  by  shutting  him  out  of  the  truth.  You 
have  nothing  to  do  with  that.  If  such  a  terrible  penalty 
as  that  can  be  inflicted,  God  must  inflict  it,  and  not  you. 
You  must  get  the  truth  in  to  any  most  closed  soul 
where  it  is  possible  to  send  it ;  but  if  a  man  is  wilfully 
obstinate  and  determined  to  find  fault,  you  have  to  turn 
away  simply  because  it  is  impossible  by  the  very  nature 
of  the  things  to  make  him  see  and  believe.  For  what- 
ever the  announcement  of  Christ  may  mean,  it  means 
something  whose  understanding  must  be  experimental 


236  CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF  MAN. 

certainly ;  it  declares  something  which  the  heart  must 
feel  before  the  mind  can  comprehend  it.  It  is  a  law  of 
spiritual  action  and  so  appeals  to  the  spiritual  function 
for  its  recognition.  If  that  spiritual  function  is  closed 
and  bolted  against  its  access  by  the  heavy  will  there  is 
no  hope  that  it  can  enter  in  another  way.  If  you  hold 
a  rose  up  before  a  man  and  he  shuts  his  eyes  tight  and 
just  holds  out  his  hands  and  says  "  Here,  I  am  ready 
to  be  persuaded ;  convince  me  by  touch  that  your  rose 
is  red  ; "  then  you  are  helpless.  If  you  hold  a  spiritual 
power  up  to  the  conscience  and  the  heart,  and  the  con- 
science and  the  heart  are  shut  tight,  refusing  to  obey 
and  love,  then  you  are  hopeless  even  if  the  intellect 
does  cry  "  Convince  me."  Christ  in  every  claim  is 
spiritual  demand  as  well  as  mental  conviction,  and  so 
the  willing  heart  must  go  with  the  open  mind.  Nothing 
is  harder  or  more  painful  than  to  try  to  tell  a  man  who 
is  simply  interested  in  Christianity  as  a  curious  prob- 
lem, what  Christ  is  to  you  as  Savior  and  Master  and 
Friend ;  and  to  see  not  merely  that  he  utterly  fails  to 
understand  you  but  that  he  thinks  all  such  accounts 
of  your  own  experience  and  such  appeal  for  a  new  spir- 
itual sense  in  him  to  be  thoroughly  unreal,  irrational, 
and  absurd. 

We  must  speak  then  mainly  to  others ;  to  those  who 
do  not  want  to  disbelieve,  those  who  are  willing  to  believe. 
Some  of  them  do  believe  already.  Having  long  made 
Christ  a  spiritual  study,  kept  their  lives  close  to  His  for 
years,  He  has  borne  witness  of  Himself  to  them  and 
they  have  drawn  much  up  from  Him.  He  has  fed  them 
richly ;  but  still,  when  the  full  words  are  put  before 
them,  about  "  eating  his  flesh,"  it  seems  as  if  there  were 


CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  237 

still  something  a  great  deal  deeper  than  they  have 
known  yet,  and  they  begin  to  ask  with  vivid  anticipa- 
tion of  some  new  experience  of  the  Savior,  made  delight- 
ful by  all  their  recollection  of  the  old,  "  How  can  He 
give  me  His  flesh  ?  I  would  know  all  if  there  is  more 
to  know,  now  that  I  have  known  so  much  and  found  it 
so  full  of  joy  and  strength." 

And  then  there  are  others  who  do  not  believe  but 
who  want  to ;  who  cannot  claim  any  personal  experi- 
ence of  Christ  but  who  long  for  it;  who  hear  others 
telling  what  He  has  done  for  them  and  who  wish  that 
they  might  know  something  of  all  this ;  who  hear  His 
own  account  of  what  He  can  do,  outgoing  any  story  that 
any  ripest  saint  has  to  tell  of  what  He  has  done ;  those, 
in  one  word,  who  want  a  Savior  and  feel  that  this  must 
be  their  Savior  though  they  cannot  see  just  how  His 
work  is  to  be  done.  These  are  the  people  that  I  want  to 
speak  to  especially  to-day,  for  there  are  no  people  in  the 
world  in  whom  Christ  must  feel  so  deep  and  tender  an 
interest,  none  of  whom  we  are  so  sure  that  He  would 
say  as  He  said  of  the  scribe  in  the  Gospel,  "  Thou  art 
not  far  from  the  kingdom  of  God." 

And  the  very  first  thing  that  one  wants  to  say  always 
to  such  people  is  this  ;  that  although  they  cannot  get 
the  assurance  which  they  need  out  of  the  reported  ex- 
perience of  other  people,  yet  the  experience  of  others 
may  give  them  an  assurance  of  the  possibility  of  gain- 
ing what  tliey  want  and  so  may  help  them  very  much. 
It  does  not  make  you  warm,  perhaps  it  makes  you  feel 
all  the  colder,  to  see  other  men  walking  off  there  in 
the  full  sunlight ;  but  it  may  let  you  know  that  your 
case  is  not  hopeless,  that  if  you  sit  and  wait  a  little 


238  CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF   MAN. 

longer  the  light  that  is  shining  on  them  may  move  on 
until  it  reaches  you  ;  or,  what  is  better  still,  that  if  you 
will  you  may  get  up  and  go  into  the  sunlight  which  will 
then  warm  you  as  much  as  them.  Either  way  the  sight 
of  their  comfort  gives  you  hope  and  courage,  which  is 
what  you  need.  So  it  is  in  religious  things.  A  verse 
of  Scripture  may  be  all  dark  to  you,  but  you  know  that 
multitudes  have  found  in  it  the  revelation  of  light  and 
life.  You  cannot  possibly  take  their  comfort  in  it  for 
your  own.  All  spiritual  culture  is  a  great  deal  too  in- 
dividual for  that.  But  you  can  believe  that  there  is 
comfort  in  it  and  search  after  it  more  hopefully  because 
they  found  it  there.  It  must  signify  something  to  you 
that,  though  it  seems  so  unintelligible  to  you,  there 
have  been  hundreds  of  thoughtful  men  and  women 
whose  soul's  life  has  run  deep  and  strong  as  a  river, 
who  have  looked  for  truth  with  eyes  quickened  by  much 
knowledge  of  life  and  human  need,  who,  if  you  had 
asked  them  for  the  secret  of  human  existence,  would 
have  done  nothing,  but  turn  and  lay  their  hand  upon 
this  chapter  and  say :  "  Except  I  eat  His  flesh  and  drink 
His  blood  I  have  no  life.  That  is  my  only  life.  I 
feed  on  Him."  You  may  say  it  proves  nothing  and  ex- 
plains nothing.  It  makes  us  believe  at  least  in  the  pos- 
sibility of  proof  and  explanation. 

And  one  thing  more.  Notice  how  Christ  receives 
this  doubting  question :  "  How  can  this  man  give  us 
His  flesh  to  eat  ?  "  "  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son 
of  Man  and  drink  His  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you." 
That  is  His  answer.  It  reminds  us  of  another  scena 
In  the  third  chapter  of  St.  John,  Jesus  says  to  Nicode- 
mus,  "  Except  a  man  be  born  again  he  cannot  see  the 


CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  239 

kingdom  of  God ; "  and  Mcodemus  answers,  "  How  can 
a  man  be  born  when  he  is  old  ? "  and  Jesus  answers 
him,  "Except  a  man  be  born  again  he  cannot  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God."  You  see  the  similarity  of 
the  two  cases.  In  each  of  them  Christ  says  "  It  must 
be ; "  and  in  both  cases  the  answer  comes,  "  How  can  it 
be  ?  "  and  in  both  again  the  answer  is,  "  It  must  be ; " 
nothing  more.  What  does  it  mean  but  this,  that  you 
«annot  know  how  it  is  done  except  by  doing  it  ?  You 
ask  me  "  How  ?  "  The  answer  is,  "  I  cannot  tell  you. 
Go  and  do  it  and  you  shall  learn."  It  may  seem  strange, 
but  it  is  no  new  law.  It  is  a  law  which  runs  through 
all  life  in  application  to  the  highest  things.  I  cannot 
tell  you  how  to  meet  sorrow.  Go  and  meet  it  and  you 
ehall  learn  the  sweet  lesson  out  of  the  bitter  education, 
I  cannot  tell  you  how  to  meet  joy  so  that  the  head  shall 
not  be  turned.  It  is  when  the  head  is  tempted  to  be 
giddy  that  it  learns  soberness  in  prosperity.  I  cannot  tell 
you  how  to  meet  death.  Who  ever  did  tell  his  brother  ? 
Nay,  can  even  God  tell  us  so  that  we  can  know  before- 
hand what  we  shall  say  to  the  king  of  terrors  when  at  last 
he  stalks  across  our  path  ?  But,  going  straight  up  to  him, 
what  beautiful  sights  have  we  not  seen  of  old  men  greet- 
ing him  as  their  friend,  and  strong  young  men  letting 
him  take  their  burden  off  of  their  yet  unbent  backs,  and 
little  children  laying  their  hands  trustingly  in  his  to  go 
down  the  dark  way  which  he  knows,  which  leads  into 
the  Father's  light.  Of  all  these  highest  trials  there  can 
be  no  previous  experiment  to  see  how  it  is  done.  You 
must  do  it.  So  only  can  you  learn  how  to  do  it.  "  How 
can  I  ? "  cries  the  poor  bereaved  heart  sitting  in  the 
darkened  room  alone  ;  "  How  can  I  live  my  dreary  life 


240  CHRIST   THE   FOOD    OF   MAN. 

alone  ? "  "  Go  on  and  live  it "  is  the  answer.  And  as 
he  goes  it  is  not  dreary  and  he  can  live  it  bravely  in 
Christ's  strength.  So  it  is  with  being  a  Christian.  Be 
one  ;  so  only  can  you  know  how.  "  How  can  I  eat  His 
flesh  ? "  "  Except  you  do  you  have  no  life."  It  seems 
hard  and  unreasonable,  this  inexorable  demand  for  the 
unintelligible  and  impossible ;  but  it  is  only  the  prin- 
ciple of  all  experimental  truth  ;  that  in  no  other  way 
than  by  experience  can  it  be  learned.  It  seems  to 
involve  a  contradiction  but  yet  it  is  the  method  of 
much  of  the  very  best  progress  which  we  make,  and  we 
all  act  on  it  constantly. 

"  You  must  love  Him,  ere  to  you 
He  shall  seem  worthy  of  your  love." 

But  now  after  all  these  preliminary  words,  let  us  go  on 
and  see  if  we  can  understand  the  question  and  at  all  see 
its  answer.  "  How  can  this  man  give  us  His  flesh  to  eat  ? " 
The  whole  expression  which  called  out  the  question  is  a 
figure.  It  is  figurative  through  and  through.  Even  the 
most  literal  Eomanist  who  applies  it  aU  to  the  sacra- 
ment of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  treats  that  sacrament 
in  the  most  material  way  still  must  own  something  of 
a  figure  in  it.  The  bread  even  though  turned  into  the 
sacred  flesh  is  still  eaten  by  the  bodily  mouth  for  spirit- 
ual purposes,  and  it  seems  impossible  to  bridge  over  the 
gap  in  the  idea  between  the  physical  and  spiritual  nour- 
ishment without  some  intrusion  of  analogy  or  figure. 
The  figure  is  very  vivid  and  graphic,  so  clear  and  sharp 
that  it  sometimes  seems  as  if  there  were  no  figure  there, 
as  if  it  were  the  statement  of  the  baldest  material  fact, 
but  it  is  figurative  nevertheless. 


CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF   MAN.  241 

And  the  general  spirit  of  the  figure  is  clear  ;  it  means 
support  or  strength.  That  is  the  idea  of  food.  Only- 
food  means  a  certain  kind  of  strength.  It  is  strength  in 
a  man,  not  strength  without  a  man.  It  is  strength  in- 
corporated and  not  strength  applied.  You  see  the  dif- 
ference. If  a  wall  is  tottering  upon  the  street  the  men 
come  with  their  timbers  and  wedge  them  in  and  brace 
the  bulging  building  back  and  hold  it  up.  If  a  man  is 
weak  so  that  his  legs  tremble  under  him,  you  give  him 
food,  and  the  strength  of  the  food  enters  into  him  and 
becomes  his  strength,  and  he  stands  firm.  There  is  the 
strength  of  a  buttress  which  sustains  a  tower,  or  a  rock  in 
which  a  tower  is  set.  That  is  outward  strength.  There 
is  the  strength  of  food  which  supports  the  man  by  be- 
coming the  man.  Evidently  that  is  something  different. 
That  is  inward  strength.  And  this  last  is  the  sort  of 
strength  which  Christ  promises  in  the  gift  of  Himself. 
Thus  much  is  clear  in  the  word  "  eat." 

We  easily  distinguish  everywhere  between  the  two 
sorts  of  strength,  and  the  last  is  more  valuable  in  so  far 
as  it  is  more  intimate  and  personal.  The  outer  strength 
is  the  strength  of  the  prop  and  the  buttress  ;  the  inner 
strength  is  the  strength  of  the  life-blood  in  the  veins. 
You  have  a  hard  duty  to  do  to-morrow  morning,  something 
which  you  thoroughly  hate  to  do.  Your  reluctance  makes 
you  weak.  But  you  must  do  it  because  it  is  God's  will 
and  so  your  duty.  You  do  not  expect  or  try  to  escape, 
but  you  cry  out  to  God  to  strengthen  you,  and  He  has 
two  ways  of  answering  your  prayer,  one  better  than  the 
other,  which  He  uses  according  as  He  finds  you  open 
and  fit  for  the  lesser  or  the  larger  mercy.  He  may 
bring  all  His  commandments  and  penalties    and  lay 

16 


242  CHRIST  THE  FOOD   OF   MAN. 

them  up  like  buttresses  against  the  weak  wall  of  your 
resolution  and  crowd  you  into  duty  by  the  pressure  of 
compulsion  and  of  fear.  Or  He  may  fill  you  so  with 
Himself,  make  you  love  Him  so  that  you  shall,  as  the 
Collect  beautifully  prays,  "  love  the  thing  that  He  com- 
mands," and  so  grow  into  duty  by  the  inspiration  of 
His  character,  His  standards,  His  life,  become  yours  by 
love.  Or  again,  you  are  too  weak  for  your  sorrow. 
What  does  He  do  to  give  you  strength  ?  He  may  per- 
haps take  the  sorrow  off;  or  He  may  give  you  something 
to  beguile  it,  something  that  makes  you  proud  to  suffer, 
or  some  strong  friendship  that  is  brought  out  by  your 
suffering  and  almost  makes  you  forget  your  agony. 
Those  are  external  strengths.  Those  are  buttresses 
against  the  walls.  He  may  do  something  better.  He 
may  give  you  that  unutterable  certainty  of  His  sympa- 
thy which  does  not  abolish  pain  but  transforms  and 
transfigures  it,  so  that  you  would  not  let  the  suffering 
go  if  with  it  you  must  lose  this  precious  nearness  of 
God.  He  may  make  suffering,  by  some  such  exquisite 
mixture,  the  source  of  rich  delight  and  holy  deeds,  so 
that  the  suffering  itself  becomes  the  central  pillar  of 
the  life,  and  does  not  have  to  be  held  up,  but  holds. 
That  is  the  inner  strength.  That  is  the  strength  of 
food. 

And  notice  how  this  last  alone  is  vital.  It  alone 
makes  life.  It  lives.  The  buttress  keeps  the  dead  wall 
standing,  but  the  sap  makes  the  live  tree  still  more  alive 
with  growth.  So  compulsion  and  fear  keep  us  true  to 
duty,  but  love  makes  us  larger  and  fit  for  greater  duty 
every  day.  Every  vital  strength  must  be  the  strength 
which  incorporates  itself  with  the  very  being  of  the  thing 


CHRIST  THE  FOOD   OF  MAN.  243 

that  it  supports.     Except  we  eat  we  can  have  no  life 
in  us. 

Now  we  must  remember  that  the  great  trouble  of  life 
with  which  religion  has  to  do,  the  only  weakness  that 
really  can  give  a  man  the  most  deep  and  poignant  sor- 
row, must  be  moral  trouble,  must  be  sin.  There  alone 
can  self-reproach  come  in ;  and  if  a  man  has  nothing  to 
reproach  himself  with  he  can  bear  anything.  But  when 
we  are  speaking  of  the  weakness  of  sin  then  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  only  strength  that  can  be  sufficient  for  it 
must  be  the  strength  that  enters  into  and  becomes  part 
of  and  changes  the  sinful  nature.  You  have  done 
wrong,  you  are  wrong,  and  in  your  wickedness  you  are 
weak  as  the  wicked  always  are.  You  are  tottering  and 
trembling  under  the  fear  of  punishment,  under  the  sense 
of  broken  harmony  with  God,  but  most  of  all  under  the 
consciousness  of  a  corrupted  and  perverted  nature  in 
yourself  What  does  Christ  do  for  you  ?  First,  He 
declares  forgiveness.  That  takes  away  the  fear  of  pun- 
ishment. He  calls  on  you  to  beUeve  that  you  are  par- 
doned. He  asks  of  you  that  faith  which,  laying  hold 
of  His  great  love,  shall  see  the  penalty  of  broken  law 
broken  itself  and  trodden  under  foot  by  triumphant 
grace.  He  reveals  God's  love  to  you.  He  shows  you 
a  Deity  not  angry  but  infinitely  pitiful.  Against  the 
wall  tottering  with  a  sense  of  divine  displeasure  He 
builds  the  strong  buttress  of  an  assured  love  of  the 
Father  you  have  sinned  against,  and  so  keeps  you  from 
falling.  These  are  external  strength.  If  they  stood  by 
themselves  they  would  be  only  external.  The  soul,  sure 
that  the  past  is  forgiven,  feeling  above  it  the  pitying 
presence  of  a  grieved  but  loving  God,  has  every  outward 


244  CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF   MAN. 

Strength  for  holiness  that  it  could  ask.  But  what  then  ? 
If  still  the  sinful  nature  stays  within,  if  the  whole  loved 
and  forgiven  man  is  still  full  of  the  old  bad  impulse, 
what  is  there  still  but  weakness  ?  Some  new  strength 
must  come,  and  it  must  be  inward  and  not  outward.  It 
must  enter  in  and  change  the  nature.  It  must  min- 
gle itself  with  the  soul  itself  and  make  that  holy  which 
was  unholy,  set  that  right  which  was  wrong.  It  must 
be  a  new  birth  of  goodness  in  the  man  as  well  as  a  new 
world  of  mercy  about  the  man.  It  must  be  not  only 
buttress  to  sustain  but  food  to  change ;  not  only  a  Christ 
to  stand  outside  and  support  with  the  strong  hands  of 
His  forgiveness,  but  a  Christ  to  come  in  and  strengthen 
by  the  power  of  His  incorporated  life. 

The  two  indeed  are  not  so  separate  as  we  seem  thus 
to  describe  them.  They  must  come  together.  The 
outer  and  the  inner,  forgiveness  and  regeneration,  are 
inseparable  halves  of  one  single  mercy,  given  not  sepa- 
rately but  by  one  single  act  of  pitying  love.  They  can- 
not come  separately.  God  does  not  forgive  a  soul  and 
leave  it  still  hopeless  in  its  unchanged  native  sinfulness ; 
nor  does  God  change  a  soul  and  leave  its  new  life 
crushed  under  the  burden  of  its  old  unforgiven  sin.  He 
does  both,  or  He  tries  to  do  both,  for  every  soul.  But 
in  our  thinking  about  the  great  mercy  there  appear 
these  two  aspects  of  it,  and  we  think  of  them  separately. 
Christ  is  the  Staff  we  lean  on,  the  Rock  we  stand  on, 
the  Light  that  leads  us,  the  Master  on  whose  breast  we 
lie ;  but  He  is  also  the  Bread  of  Life.  He  is  many 
things  outside  of  us,  —  Wisdom,  Eighteousness,  Ee- 
demption.  He  is  also  something  inside  of  us,  Sanctifi- 
cation.     He  says  "  Lean  on  Me,  stand  on  Me,  take  hold 


CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  245 

of  Me  and  walk."  But  when  He  takes  up  His  deepest 
word  it  is  this,  —  "  Feed  on  Me ;  unless  you  feed  on  Me 
you  have  no  life  in  you."  He  says  "  Look  and  see  how 
good  God  is  ;  touch  Me  and  feel  God's  mercy ;  hear 
Me  and  I  will  tell  you  how  He  loves  you."  But  at  the 
last  this  comes  as  the  commandment  of  the  deepest 
faith,  the  promise  of  the  highest  mercy,  — "  O  taste 
and  see  that  the  Lord  is  gracious." 

My  dear  friends,  how  noble  and  how  beautiful  it  is. 
Great  is  the  work  that  Christ  does  for  us.  Greater, 
deeper  still,  because  without  it  all  the  other  would  be 
purposeless  and  useless,  is  the  work  that  Christ  does  in 
us.  How  wonderful  it  is.  The  world  glows  with  the 
assurance  of  redemption.  Heaven  opens,  and  there 
the  saints  and  elders  are  prostrate  before  the  throne. 
The  whole  spiritual  universe  trembles  with  the  new 
spiritual  life  which  has  come  to  it  out  of  the  marvellous 
death.  In  the  midst  of  it  all  lies  one  soul,  dead  and 
incapable  of  action,  though  intensely  alive  with  desire 
for  a  share  in  all  this  glorious  vitality.  It  knows  that 
all  this  is  for  it,  and  yet  it  cannot  rise  up  and  lay  hold 
of  it.  The  world  about  it  is  strong  with  the  promise 
and  temptation  of  holy  things.  The  soul  itself  is  weak 
with  its  own  unholiness.  Then  comes  the  better,  per- 
fect, completing  promise  of  a  change  of  soul.  The 
Christ  who  has  done  all  this  offers  to  do  one  thing  more, 
to  make  the  dead  soul  alive  and  able  to  enjoy  and  use 
it  all.  He  will  come  into  us,  not  merely  stand  without 
us.  He  will  come  in  and  be  Himself  the  power  which 
lays  hold  of  His  own  invitations.  We  may  feed  on 
Him.  Nay,  let  us  take  His  own  strong  word  and  say, 
"  He  that  eateth  Me,  the  same  shall  live  by  Me."     That 


'Z^fi  CHRIST   THE   FOOD    OF   MAN. 

is  the  inner  life,  Christ  in  the  soul  rising  up  and  laying 
hold  of  the  infinite  possibilities  which  redemption  has  pre- 
pared. Forgiveness  is  not  too  great  a  boon,  earth  is  not 
too  sacred  or  solemn,  heaven  is  not  too  glorious,  for  the 
soul  which,  alive  with  Christ,  claims  all  the  spiritual 
life  that  Christ  has  created  for  its  own. 

To  feed  on  Christ,  then,  is  to  get  His  strength  into 
us  to  be  our  strength.  You  feed  on  the  cornfield  and 
the  strength  of  the  cornfield  comes  into  you  and  is  your 
strength.  You  feed  on  the  cornfield  and  then  go  and 
build  your  house,  and  it  is  the  cornfield  in  your  strong 
arm  that  builds  the  house,  that  cuts  down  the  trees  and 
piles  the  stone  and  lifts  the  roof  into  its  place.  You 
feed  on  Christ  and  then  go  and  live  your  life,  and  it  is 
Christ  in  you  that  lives  your  life,  that  helps  the  poor, 
that  tells  the  truth,  that  fights  the  battle,  and  that  wins 
the  crown. 

But  what  is  this  strength  of  Christ  that  comes  to  us  ? 
There  can  be  only  one  answer.  It  is  His  character. 
There  is  no  strength  that  is  communicable  except  in 
character.  It  is  the  moral  qualities  of  His  nature  that 
are  to  enter  into  us  and  be  ours  because  we  are  His. 
This  is  His  strength,  His  purity,  His  truth,  His  merci- 
fulness, —  in  one  word.  His  holiness,  the  perfectness  of 
His  moral  life.  It  is  not  that  He  made  the  heavens ;  it 
is  not  that  He  is  the  Lord  and  King  of  hosts  of  angels, 
cherubim  and  seraphim,  who  do  His  will  and  fly  on 
errands  of  helpfulness  to  laboring  souls  all  through  the 
world  at  His  command.  Those  are  the  external  strength 
which  Christ  supplies.  In  unknown,  countless  ways 
He  furnishes  it.  Even  the  powers  of  nature  He  can 
mould  to  most  obedient  servantship  to  His  disciple's 


CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF   MAN.  247 

needs.  He  helps  us  as  the  divine  can  help  the  human, 
by  supplies  of  power  coming  from  without  and  laying 
themselves  against  the  tottering  life.  But  this  is  not 
the  strength  which  enters  in  and,  by  a  beautiful  incorpora- 
tion with  the  disciple's  weakness,  becomes  his  strength. 
That  must  be  a  strength  of  which  the  human  disciple 
too  is  capable,  as  well  as  the  divine  Master.  It  must 
be  that  holiness  which  was  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and 
which  we,  because  we  are  of  the  same  humanity  that  He 
wore,  are  capable  of  possessing  and  developing.  This  is 
the  strength  of  which  we  eat,  and  which  like  true  food 
enters  into  us  and  becomes  truly  ours  while  it  is  still 
His. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  understanding  of  that  word 
"  flesh."  We  are  to  eat  His  flesh.  Now  the  flesh  was  the 
expression  of  the  human  life  of  Jesus.  It  was  in  His 
incarnation  that  He  became  capable  of  uttering  those 
qualities  in  which  man  might  be  like  Him,  which  men 
might  receive  from  Him  and  take  into  themselves. 
Think  of  it.  God  had  stood  before  men  from  the  first, 
and  they  had  looked  with  awe  and  adoration  upon  Him 
throned  far  above  them.  They  had  worshipped  Him, 
they  had  feared  Him,  they  had  loved  Him.  Now  and 
then  some  ardent  and  ambitious  spirit  soaring  to  the 
highest  dream  of  the  soul,  or  some  patient  and  humble 
nature  purified  to  deeper  insight  by  its  humility,  had 
conceived  that  man  ought  not  only  to  worship  and  fear 
and  love  God,  but  to  be  like  God,  to  reflect  in  his  own 
obedient  nature  the  perfectness  that  he  adored.  But 
how  ?  What  was  it  that  he  should  reflect  ?  What  was 
there  in  the  Deity  that  could  repeat  itself  in  man  ?  Not 
His  majesty,  not  omnipotence  and  not  omniscience,  surely. 


248  CHRIST  THE   FOOD   OF   MAN. 

Men  were  bewildered ;  and  either  vague  and  impious 
attempts  to  match  the  inimitable  glories  that  belong 
only  to  divinity,  like  Eden  or  Babel ;  or  else  reckless 
discouragement  and  brutal  despair,  as  if  nothing  that 
was  in  God  could  be  restored  in  man,  as  in  the  countless 
Sodoms  and  Gomorrahs  of  the  ancient  world,  —  these 
were  the  terrible  results  of  the  blind  craving.  Then 
came  the  incarnation.  Here  was  God  in  the  flesh. 
Solemnly,  that  of  the  divine  which  was  capable  of  being 
wrapped  in  and  of  living  through  the  human,  was  brought 
close  within  that  wondrous  human  life  lived  in  a  human 
body.  There  was  the  God  we  were  to  imitate,  to  grow 
like  to,  to  take  into  ourselves  until  He  filled  us  with 
Himself.  It  was  the  incarnate  God  ;  it  was  the  God  in 
the  flesh  that  was  to  enter  into  man.  This  was  the 
flesh  we  were  to  eat  and  by  which  we  were  to  live. 

Do  you  not  see  this  ?  God  in  the  heavens,  the  eter- 
nal unseen  God,  is  true.  His  truth  is  the  pillar  of  the 
universe.  But  can  man  win  tliat  truth  ?  It  is  too  vast, 
too  mighty,  too  bound  up  with  omniscience.  But  be- 
hold here  !  Here  in  the  flesh  is  truth  as  perfect,  as  divine, 
yet  truly  human.  Listen  to  the  truth  as  it  is  shown  to 
Pharisee  and  publican,  to  His  disciples  and  His  judges, 
to  the  young  man  who  wanted  to  be  His  follower,  and 
to  Judas  Iscariot  who  was  to  betray  Him.  That  is  the 
truth,  that  truth  incarnate,  the  divine  truth  in  the  flesh, 
that  we  are  to  take  and  eat  and  make  it  truth  in  us. 
So  of  purity.  It  was  awful  as  it  flashed  in  solemn 
indignant  judgments  from  the  clouded  skies.  It  was 
gentle,  gracious,  and  human,  thougli  none  the  less  divine, 
as  it  defied  and  cowed  the  devil  in  the  temptation  in 
the  desert.     So  of  pity,  even.     It  awes  us  and  consoles 


CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF   MAN.  249 

US  when  it  comes  to  us  out  of  the  unseen  heart  of  God 
by  the  revelations  of  nature  or  our  own  experience. 
But  it  enters  into  us  and  makes  us  pitiful  when  it  falls 
upon  us  in  the  soft  tear-drops  of  the  pitying  Savior  at 
the  tomb  of  Lazarus.  These  are  the  acts  that  Jesus  did. 
Take  the  yet  more  wonderful  being  lying  behind  them 
all  which  Jesus  was,  and  see  how  that,  in  its  perfect 
consecration,  in  its  consecrated  perfectness,  became  clear 
and  imitable  to  men ;  how  men  began  to  believe  that 
they  might  be  that  divine  thing  too  when  they  saw  it 
in  the  incarnate  God,  in  Christ ;  and  then,  I  think,  you 
can  understand  something  of  how  only  in  the  flesh  could 
God  thus  present  Himself  for  the  most  intimate  en- 
trance into  man ;  so  can  know  something  of  what  Jesus 
meant  when  He  bade  the  hungry  human  soul  eat  of 
His  flesh. 

How  high  that  hunger  and  its  satisfaction  is.  You 
long  for  God  to  come  and  be  within  you,  to  rule  you,  to 
fill  you ;  nay,  in  the  words  that  sound  so  mystical  but 
are  so  real  to  multitudes  who  seek  in  vain  for  other 
words  to  tell  the  strange  experience,  for  God  to  be  you 
and  to  live  your  life.  That  is  a  vast  desire.  How 
every  other  wish  grows  insignificant  beside  it.  Do  you 
know  anything  of  it  ?  I  trust  you  do.  You  look  on 
high  and  God  is  too  mighty.  You  look  close  by  your 
side  and  Jesus  Christ,  the  God  incarnate,  has  the  very 
words  you  need :  "  He  that  eateth  My  flesh  and  drinketh 
My  blood  dwelleth  in  Me  and  I  in  him."  "  This  is  the 
bread  that  came  down  from  heaven."  "  He  that  eateth  of 
this  bread  shall  live  forever."  Then  there  is  nothing 
left  but  to  cry,  "  Come,  come.  Lord  Jesus." 

But  there  is  one  thing  more  that  I  must  say.     This 


250  CHRIST   THE  FOOD   OF   MAN. 

giving  of  His  own  flesh  for  our  food  is  always  spoken  of 
in  connection  with  the  great  sacrifice  of  the  flesh  in 
which  He  gave  it  for  us.  There  is  always  this  associa- 
tion between  the  reception  of  the  strength  of  the  incar- 
nate Christ,  and  His  crucifixion  in  which  He  willingly 
gave  Himself  up  that  He  might  furnish  that  strength 
to  His  people  forever.  The  great  Christian  sacrament, 
which  embodies  this  idea  of  which  we  have  been  treat- 
ing, the  idea  of  the  feeding  of  the  soul  upon  the  flesh  of 
Christ,  is  all  filled  full  of  memories  of  the  agony  in 
which  the  flesh  was  offered.  What  does  this  mean  ? 
Does  it  not  mean  this,  —  that  however  man  longs  for 
his  God ;  however  man  sees  that  in  the  incarnate 
Christ  there  is  the  God  he  needs  and  whom  his  nature 
was  made  to  receive ;  it  is  only  when  man  sees  that 
Divine  Being  suffering  for  him,  only  when  he  stands  by 
the  cross  and  beholds  the  love  in  the  agony,  that  his 
hungry  nature  is  able  to  take  the  food  it  needs,  that  is 
so  freely  offered  ?  The  flesh  must  be  broken  before  we 
can  take  it.  This  is  what  Christ  says,  and  the  history 
of  thousands  of  souls  have  borne  their  witness  to  it, 
that  it  is  the  suffering  Savior,  the  Savior  in  His  suffer- 
ing, that  saves  the  soul.  Eager  and  earnest  men  may 
have  gone  beyond  what  is  written,  beyond  what  is  pos- 
sible for  us  to  know,  in  their  attempts  to  analyze  that 
suffering  and  in  telling  just  how  it  works  most  wonder- 
ful eftects.  I  believe  they  have.  But  do  not  let  that 
make  you  lose  sight  of  what  the  Bible  tells  you,  that  it 
is  the  death  of  Christ  that  saves  the  world  ;  nor  of  what 
your  own  heart  must  tell  you  if  you  let  it  speak,  that  it 
is  only  when  you  see  this  Savior  whom  you  honor,  whom 
you  love  and  try  to  serve,  dying  to  show  a  love  for  you 


CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  251 

which  nothing  short  of  death  could  utter ;  only  then  that 
the  soul  opens  wide  enough  with  gratitude  to  take  Him 
in  completely  to  be  its  life  and  its  salvation. 

The  suffering  Savior  inly  known,  and  through  His 
wounds  letting  out  His  life  into  the  starved  lives  of  those 
who  hold  Him  fast,  that  is  the  Gospel.  It  is  not  what 
church  you  belong  to  or  what  work  you  do,  but  what 
you  know  of,  how  deeply  you  are  fed  by  Him  —  the  suf- 
fering Savior.     That  is  the  question  for  the  soul. 

Before  His  cross  the  lesson  must  be  learned.  Stand 
there  until  you  are  grateful  through  and  through  for 
such  a  love  so  marvellously  shown.  Let  gratitude  open 
your  life  to  receive  His  Spirit ;  let  it  make  you  long  and 
try  to  be  like  Him ;  let  love  bring  Him  into  you  so  that 
you  shall  do  His  will  because  you  have  His  heart.  That 
entrance  of  His  life  into  you  shall  give  you  strength  and 
nourishment  you  never  knew  before.  Then  you  shall 
know  in  growing,  dependent,  delighted  strength,  more 
and  more  every  day,  the  answer  to  the  old  ever  new 
question,  "How  can  this  man  give  us  His  flesh  to 
eat  ? " 

How  can  He  ?  Certainly  He  can  if  you  will  go  to 
Him  and  pray  to  Him  and  love  Him  and  obey  Him 
and  receive  Him.  And  what  a  strength  comes  of  that 
holy  feeding  !  Where  is  the  task  that  terrifies  the  man 
who  lives  by  Christ  ?  Where  is  the  discouragement 
over  which  he  will  not  walk  to  go  to  the  right  which 
he  must  reach  ?  You  may  starve  him  but  he  has  this 
inner  food.  You  may  darken  his  life  but  he  has  this 
inner  light.  You  may  make  war  about  him  but  he  has 
this  peace  within.  You  may  turn  the  world  into  a  hell 
but  he  carries  his  inner  heaven  safely  through  its  fiercest 


252  CHRIST   THE   FOOD   OF   MAN. 

fires.  He  is  like  Christ  himself.  He  has  meat  to  eat 
that  we  know  not  of,  and  in  the  strength  of  it  he  over- 
comes at  last  and  is  conqueror  through  his  Lord.  It  is 
possible,  and  may  God  make  it  real  for  all  of  us. 


XV. 

THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

"  Handle  me  and  see,  for  a  spirit  hath  not  flesh  and  bones  as  ye  see  me 
have."  —  Luke  xxiv.  39. 

In  these  words  Christ  after  his  resurrection  appeals  to 
His  disciples  to  bear  witness  that  He  is  a  true  living  man, 
and  not  a  disembodied  spirit.  He  bids  them  use  their 
human  senses  to  discover  that  He  is  truly  human  like 
themselves.  The  words  therefore  may  represent  to  us 
the  perpetual  appeal  which  Christ  makes  to  our  human 
consciousness  and  to  the  perceptions  of  mankind  to 
recognize  His  true  humanity.  As  He  then  offered  His 
human  body  for  the  inspection  of  His  disciples,  and  bade 
them  own  that  it  was  truly  a  man's  body,  so  He  is  al- 
ways offering  His  whole  human  nature  and  calling  on 
men  to  witness  that  He  is  truly  human  in  thought  and 
feeling  and  character,  the  pattern  and  fulfilment  of 
humanity. 

I  want  to  speak  this  morning  of  the  Manliness  of 
Christ.  It  is  a  subject  of  which  many  thoughtful  men 
are  thinking.  A  recent  book  of  Mr.  Thomas  Hughes, 
whom  one  may  almost  call  a  student  and  connoisseur 
of  manliness,  has  dwelt  with  very  great  force  and  beauty 
upon  the  manliness  of  Christ,  and  has  turned  many 
people's  thoughts  that  way.  He  frankly  accepts  the 
challenge  that  if  Christ  is  really  the  perfection  of  our 


254  THE   MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST. 

humanity  He  must  present  our  human  nature  in  such  a 
shape  and  action  that  we  men  shall  be  able  to  recog- 
nize it  by  our  best  human  standards  as  the  truest  and 
the  best ;  not  weak,  timid,  sentimental ;  but  strong, 
brave,  vigorous,  full  of  feeling  but  also  full  of  conscience ; 
fuU  of  reason  ;  patient  by  abundance  not  by  lack  of  life ; 
tolerant,  forgiving,  meek,  not  from  superficialness  but 
from  the  depth  of  insight  and  emotion.  So  does  this 
writer,  with  his  genius  for  manliness,  describe  the  manly 
Christ.  He  holds  His  picture  up  and  as  it  were  cries 
anew  "  Ecce  Homo,"  "  Behold  the  Man,"  But  at  the  same 
time  he  owns  that  somewhere,  somehow,  there  has  grown 
up  a  certain  distrust  of  Christ's  manliness,  a  certain  mis- 
giving that  the  man  of  the  four  gospels  does  not  com- 
pletely match  with  the  standard  of  manly  life  which  is 
most  popular  and  current  among  men.  There  are  actions 
of  His,  there  are  features  of  His  character,  which  men 
need  to  study,  which  perhaps  they  need  to  grow  to,  be- 
fore they  can  see  that  they  are  the  types  of  truest  man- 
liness. It  is  from  these  two  facts  that  I  wish  to  start 
in  what  I  have  to  say.  First,  the  fact  that  the  character 
of  Christ  does  satisfy  the  highest  conceptions  of  our  hu- 
manity ;  and  second,  the  fact  that  it  is  only  the  highest 
conception  of  our  humanity  which  it  satisfies,  that  the 
lower,  the  current,  ordinary,  commonplace  notions  of 
manliness  are  puzzled  by  it.  Both  of  these  facts  are 
true  and  both  are  important.  At  first  sight  they  may 
seem  contradictory ;  but  out  of  a  consideration  of  both 
of  them  together  I  think  that  we  must  reach  a  true 
idea  of  the  nature  and  mission  of  the  manliness  of 
Jesus. 

And  let  me  add  one  remark  more.     The  very  word 


THE   MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST.  255 

•*  manliness  "  has  a  certain  ambiguity  about  it.  I  think 
it  is  a  word  which  many  men  are  beginning  to  hesitate 
at  using  though  they  hardly  know  the  reason  why.  It 
has  a  touch  of  cant.  What  does  it  mean  ?  It  surely 
ought  to  mean  the  sum  of  the  best  qualities  which  char- 
acterize our  humanity,  joined  in  their  true  proportion. 
That  is  what  manliness  ought  to  mean.  And  evidently 
if  it  did  mean  that,  then  if  our  manhood  is  continually 
changing,  rising,  opening  new  possibilities,  revealing  new 
qualities,  it  must  follow  that  manliness  must  be  not  one 
single  invariable  quality,  but  a  constantly  advancing 
and  enlarging  ideal  of  character,  never  completely  and 
permanently  settled  until  manhood  shall  have  reached 
its  best.  It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind,  I  think,  that 
manliness,  in  its  truest  definition,  must  be  this  ever 
changing  and  developing  idea ;  even  while  we  feel  our- 
selves at  liberty  to  use  the  word  in  the  popular  and  ordi- 
nary way,  as  if  it  were  one  fixed  and  constant  and  clearly 
recognizable  condition  of  human  life.  At  any  rate  it  is 
only  with  this  fullest  conception  of  what  manliness 
means  that  we  can  rightly  understand  the  nature  and 
influence  of  the  manliness  of  JcvSus.  ^ 

The  Incarnation,  then,  the  beginning  of  the  earthly 
life  of  Christ,  was  the  fulfilment,  the  filling  full,  of  a  hu- 
man nature  by  Divinity.  We  do  not  ask,  we  do  not 
dare  to  hope  to  know,  what  was  the  influence  upon 
Divinity  of  that  mysterious  union.  But  of  what  was 
its  influence  upon  humanity  there  certainly  can  be  no 
doubt.  It  made  the  man  in  whom  the  miracle  oc- 
curred, absolutely  perfect  man.  It  did  not  make  Him 
something  else  than  man.  If  it  had  done  that,  all  His 
value  as  a  pattern  for  humanity,  all  His   temptation 


256  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

of  men  to  be  like  Him  would  be  gone.  Whenever  He 
says  to  men  "  Follow  Me ; "  "  Be  like  Me,"  He  is  declar- 
ing that  He  is  man  as  they  are  men,  that  the  peculiar 
Divinity  which  filled  Him,  while  it  carried  human- 
ity to  its  complete  development,  had  not  changed  that 
humanity  into  something  which  was  no  longer  human. 
Can  we  picture  that  to  ourselves  ?  Is  it  not  just  as 
when  the  sunlight  fills  a  jewel  ?  The  jewel  throbs  and 
glows  with  radiance.  All  its  mysterious  nature  pal- 
pitates and  burns  with  clearness.  It  opens  depths  of 
color  which  we  did  not  see  before.  But  still  it  is  the 
jewel's  self  that  we  are  seeing.  The  sunlight  has  made 
us  see  what  it  is,  not  turned  it  into  something  differ- 
ent from  what  it  was.  Or  to  take  another  illustration 
which  perhaps  comes  nearer  to  our  truth.  A  man  be- 
comes a  scholar.  He  learns  all  rich  and  elevating  truth. 
As  that  truth  enters  into  him,  his  human  nature  opens 
and  deepens  and  unfolds  its  qualities.  He  becomes 
"more  of  a  man,"  as  we  say  in  one  of  our  common 
phrases.  But  that  very  phrase,  "  more  of  a  man,"  im- 
plies that  he  becomes  not  something  different  from  man, 
but  more  truly  and  completely  man.  His  manhood  is 
not  changed  into  something  else  ;  it  is  developed  into  a 
completer  self  by  the  truth  which  he  learns. 

In  both  these  cases  one  thing  evidently  appears  ;  which 
is  that  the  developing  power  which  brings  the  being 
into  which  it  enters  to  its  best  has  essential  and  natural 
relations  to  the  being  which  it  develops.  The  jewel  be- 
longs to  the  light.  The  man  belongs  to  the  knowledge. 
And  this  must  always  be  the  truth  wliich  must  underlie 
all  understanding  of  the  Incarnation.  Man  belongs  to 
God.     The  human  nature  belongs  to  the  Divine.     It  can 


THE   MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST.  257 

come  to  its  best  only  by  the  entrance  and  possession  of 
it  by  Divinity.  The  Incarnation^  let  us  always  be  sure, 
was  not  unnatural  and  violent  but  in  the  highest  sense 
supremely  natural.  It  is  the  first  truth  of  all  our  exist-  \ 
ence  that  man  is  eternally  the  son  of  God.  No  man/ 
who  forgets  or  denies  that  truth  can  really  lay  hold  j6i 
the  lofty  fact  that  God  entered  into  man. 

We  may  pass  on  then,  with  this  truth  clear  in  our 
minds  that  the  Christhood  was  a  true  development  and 
not  a  distortion  of  humanity,  we  may  pass  on  to  study 
the  working  of  the  law  of  development  under  other  illus- 
trations. 

Human  nature,  we  say,  is  developed  by  the  advance 
of  civilization.  Man  civilized  is  man  filled  out,  carried 
along  towards  his  completion.  True  civilization  does 
not  make  man  something  else  than  man.  It  makes  his 
manhood  more  complete.  It  gives  him  no  new  powers 
of  thought  or  action.  It  sets  free  the  powers  that 
belong  to  him  as  man.  It  makes  him  truly  manly. 
But  when  we  say  this  we  at  once  remember  what  differ- 
ent views  different  men  have  always  had  of  the  effects 
of  civilization.  In  general  men  have  believed  that  civ- 
ilization was  an  advance.  The  civilized  man  has  seemed 
in  general  to  be  completer  than  the  savage  man.  But 
always,  alongside  of  this  opinion,  there  has  run  a  more 
or  less  distinct  remonstrance.  Always  there  have  been 
men  who  have  dwelt  upon  the  loss  which  civilization 
has  involved.  Civilization  has  seemed  to  some  men 
to  mean  deterioration.  A  certain  freshness,  freeness, 
breadth,  spontaneousness,  has  seemed  to  make  the  sav- 
age a  completer  man  than  he  who  had  been  ti-ained  in 
many  arts,  and  evolved  through  a  long  complicated  his- 

17 


258  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHKIST. 

tory.  The  protest  has  not  been  clear  or  strong  enough 
to  sha>€  the  general  conviction  that  the  civilized  man 
was  the  more  truly  human  man  ;  but  there  is  surely  mean- 
ing, as  there  is  deep  pathos,  in  the  way  in  which  men 
have  always  looked  back  from  the  heights  of  the  highest 
culture,  and  felt  that  tliey  had  lost  something  in  the 
progress,  longed  for  some  charm  of  youth  which  the  race 
remembered  but  found  no  longer  in  itself. 

And  what  is  true  of  the  race  is  true  also  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  boy  grows  up  to  be  a  man,  and  as  he 
ripens  he  becomes  more  manly.  His  human  nature, 
filled  out  with  more  knowledge  and  experience,  com- 
pletes more  nearly  the  full  figure  of  humanity.  But 
who  is  not  aware  of  that  strange  sense  of  loss  whicli 
haunts  the  ripening  man  ?  With  all  that  he  has  come 
to,  there  is  something  that  he  has  left  behind.  In  some 
moods  the  loss  seems  to  outweigh  the  gain.  He  knows 
it  is  not  really  so,  but  yet  the  misgiving  that  freshness 
has  been  sacrificed  to  maturity,  intenseness  to  complete- 
ness, enthusiasm  to  wisdom,  makes  the  pathos  of  the  life 
of  every  sensitive  and  growing  man. 

We  stop  a  moment  to  observe  how  full  the  Bible  is 
of  this  idea.  The  New  Jerusalem  with  which  it  ends 
is  greater  and  better  than  the  Garden  which  blooms  at 
its  beginning.  A  more  complete  and  manlier  man 
walks  on  the  sea  of  glass  mingled  with  fire  than  walked 
in  the  shade  and  light  of  Eden.  The  whole  story  is  of 
an  education  and  a  progress.  And  yet  all  through  the 
Bible  runs  a  tender  and  live  regret  for  that  lost  imper- 
fect manhood.  Better  things  may  come  in  the  great 
future,  but  it  seems  as  if  there  were  something  gone  in 
tlie  great  past  that  never  could  come  back.     The  edu- 


THE  MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST.  259 

cation  and  progress  are  haunted  by  the  memory  of  a 
fall.  There  is  no  thought  of  going  back.  The  true 
completion  of  humanity  always  in  the  Bible  lies  before 
and  not  behind.  And  yet  the  flaming  sword  of  Genesis 
always  seems  to  shut  man  out  from  a  tree  of  life  which 
he  never  can  forget  even  while  he  presses  forward  to 
the  completer  tree  of  never-failing  fruit  which  grows  by 
the  side  of  the  river  of  the  water  of  life  in  the  Apoca- 
lypse. 

It  would  seem  then  as  if  this  truth  were  very  general, 
that  in  every  development  there  is  a  sense  of  loss  as 
well  as  a  sense  of  gain.  The  flower  opening  into  its 
full  luxuriance  has  no  longer  the  folded  beauty  of  the 
bud.  The  summer  with  its  splendor  has  lost  the  fasci- 
nating mystery  of  spring-time.  The  family  of  grown- 
up men  remembers  almost  with  regret  the  crude  dreams 
which  filled  the  old  house  with  romance  when  the  men 
were  boys.  The  reasonable  faith  to  which  the  thinker 
has  attained  cannot  forget  the  glow  of  vague  emotion 
with  which  faith  began.  The  enthusiast,  devoted  to  and 
filled  out  by  his  cause,  misses  the  light  and  careless  life 
he  used  to  live.  It  is  not  that  the  progress  is  repented 
nor  that  the  higher  standard  is  disowned.  Rather  it 
seems  to  be  a  certain  ineradicable  charm  that  belongs 
to  incompleteness,  inherent  in  its  consciousness  of  prom- 
ise and  of  hope,  which  lingers  even  when  the  promise 
has  been  fulfilled  and  the  hope  attained,  and  makes  us 
sometimes  almost  seem  to  be  sorry  for  the  fulfilment 
and  attainment. 

And  now,  after  all  this,  let  us  come  hack  to  the 
manliness  of  Christ.  I  think  that  it  all  applies  there 
and  may  give   us   some   help.     Suppose   exactly  that 


260  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

to  take  place  which  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation 
assures  us  has  taken  place.  Suppose  that  God  should 
come  and  perfectly  occupy  a  human  life.  That  life  like 
every  human  life  belongs  to  Him.  He  occupies  it  with 
a  certain  supernatural  naturalness.  And  what  im- 
pression will  that  life,  fully  developed,  developed  com- 
pletely by  the  indwelling  God,  make  on  the  men  who 
see  it  ?  Will  it  not  open  to  them  views  of  their  own 
possibilities  which  they  never  had  before  ?  Will  they 
not  say,  "  Here  for  the  first  time  is  a  man "  ?  Will 
they  not  see  that  all  their  old  standards  were  poor  and 
partial  ?  Will  they  not  own  that  it  is  the  supremely 
manly  life  ?  This  they  will  certainly  do  if  by  manli- 
ness they  mean  that  which  before  I  said  they  ought  to 
mean,  the  full  ideal  of  manhood,  if  they  have  not 
stopped  short  and  formalized  their  notion  of  manliness 
at  some  incomplete  attainment  of  human  nature.  And 
yet,  will  they  do  this  readily  and  easily  ?  Will  there 
be  no  clinging  to  the  old  standards ;  no  sense  of  loss  in 
the  abandonment  of  lower  ideals ;  no  reaching  back  here 
too  after  the  brilliancy  of  incompleteness,  of  partial  un- 
symmetrical  development ;  no  missing  of  the  morning 
that  came  before  this  full  noontide  of  character  which 
is  flooding  their  souls  ? 

This  is  precisely  what  I  think  we  see.  Men  call 
Christ  the  crown  of  manhood,  the  perfect  man,  and 
yet  they  need  a  book,  yea,  many  books,  to  teach  them 
that  He  is  manly.  They  have  given  that  name  so  long 
to  brilliant  incompleteness  that  they  find  it  hard  to 
carry  it  over  to  the  complete  life  when  it  appears.  The 
name  of  manly  has  become  a  certain  fixed  definite 
thing,  not  pliable  and  capable  of  advancement  and  en- 


THE   MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST.  261 

largement  to  some  new  manifestation  of  what  is  worthi- 
est of  man,  what  it  is  noblest  for  a  man  to  be. 

This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  real  state  of  the  case. 
Men  own  that  the  human  character  of  Christ  is  the 
completest  human  character  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  and  yet  they  give  their  admiration  to  incomplete 
characters ;  and,  not  yet  lifted  to  the  full  revelation  of 
the  Lord,  they  call  that  manly  which  they  know  all  the 
while  is  something  less  than  the  full-orbed  attainment 
of  the  perfect  man.  Here  is  a  Christian  boy  who  loves 
Christ,  honors  Him,  wants  to  please  Him,  wants  to  serve 
Him,  and  yet  that  boy  carries  in  his  mind  a  distinctly 
inferior  type  of  character  to  which  he  gives  this  name 
of  manly.  He  knows  that  Christ  was  and  is  tender 
and  patient.  Nay,  it  is  because  Christ  has  revealed  to 
him  that  tenderness  and  patience  are  the  consummate 
utterances  of  our  manhood,  that  he  has  recognized  the 
tender,  patient  Christ  as  being  supremely  man.  And 
yet  that  boy's  soul  is  haunted  by  the  sense  that  in 
giving  himself  up  to  these  new  standards  and  making 
it  the  prayer  and  struggle  of  his  life  to  be  tender  and 
patient,  he  would  be  losing  something  which  he  cannot 
bear  to  lose,  the  sternness  and  hardness  and  quickness 
to  resent  an  insult,  which  all  the  earlier  standards  of  life 
have  agreed  upon  as  the  proofs  of  manliness.  It  is  a 
strange  condition,  but  is  it  not  just  exactly  the  condi- 
tion which  we  have  found  in  all  the  instances  of  pro- 
gression and  development  of  which  we  spoke  ?  The 
acceptance  of  the  higher  standard  is  haunted  by  a  re- 
luctance to  let  the  lower  go.  Many  a  man,  as  I  believe, 
is  to-day  just  in  this  condition.  He  knows  that  the 
humanity  of  Jesus  is  the  type  of  all  humanity.     He 


262  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

ought,  if  he  knows  that,  to  go  right  on  and  say,  "  Then 
Jesus  is  the  manliest  of  men,  and  what  He  would  do 
under  any  given  circumstances  must  be  the  manliest 
thing  that  under  tliose  circumstances  it  is  possible  for 
any  man  to  do.  If  He  would  not  resent  an  injury  but 
forgive  it,  then  forgiveness,  not  resentment,  must  be 
true  manliness."  Does  he  say  that  ?  No,  he  draws 
back  and  cannot  let  the  charm  of  the  old  spontaneous 
unchristian  resentment  go,  and  strikes  his  revengeful 
blow  and  says,  "  I  know  it  is  not  Christian,  but  it  is 
manly,"  and  so  abandons  his  conviction  that  Jesus  is 
the  perfect  man. 

This  is  not  a  mere  question  of  the  meaning  of  a  cer- 
tain word.  It  is  something  far  more  real  than  that.  It 
seems  to  me  very  clear  that  while  men  recognize  in 
Christ  a  true  and  high  humanity,  so  that  they  are  will- 
ing in  all  their  better  moods  to  own  Him  as  the  pattern 
man,  there  yet  lurks  underneath  this  acknowledgment  a 
quiet,  half-conscious  misgiving  and  questioning  whether 
His  manliness  is  one  that  the  human  heart  can  cordially 
accept  and  love.  The  reason  is  convinced,  and  the 
heart  hesitates  ;  just  the  condition  of  the  subject  of  any 
development  where  the  heart  still  looks  back  with  long- 
ing to  the  undeveloped  state.  This  is  the  philosophy 
of  that  which  we  see  everywhere,  that  of  which  I  spoke 
at  the  beginning  of  my  sermon  ;  the  mixture  of  profound 
admiration  for  the  character  of  Christ  with  a  misgiving, 
a  suspicion  of  some  weakness  in  Him  and  in  the  life 
that  implicitly  follows  Him ;  a  disposition  to  hold  back 
the  name  of  manly  from  the  perfect  man  and  His 
disciples. 

If  this  be  true,  then,  it  points  us  at  once  to  what  is 


THE   MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST.  263 

most  important,  which  is  that  the  manliness  of  Christ 
has  a  double  mission  in  the  world.  It  is  at  once  au- 
thentication and  revelation.  It  must  at  once  appeal  to 
me  to  recognize  it  by  the  human  instinct  that  there  is 
in  me  already,  and  so  trust  Him  for  all  He  has  to  do ; 
and  also  it  must  enlarge,  enlighten,  and  refine  the  in- 
stinct of  humanity  by  which  it  has  first  been  recognized. 
I  know  Christ  because  I  know  manhood ;  and  then,  know- 
ing Him,  He  makes  me  know  manhood  anew  and  far 
more  deeply.  In  other  words,  it  is  the  work  of  the 
human  Christ  at  once  to  satisfy  and  to  reconstruct  our 
notions  of  manliness.  Alas  for  us  if  it  were  not  so. 
Alas  if,  coming  in  among  our  ordinary  human  lives, 
His  human  life  so  absolutely  fitted  in  with  them  that  it 
offered  them  no  suggestion,  gave  them  no  lesson  or 
rebuke.  The  real  truth  about  the  manliness  of  Christ 
seems  to  be  this :  that  He  is  so  like  us  that  He  makes 
us  know  that  we  may  be  like  Him,  and  so  unlike  us 
that  He  makes  us  know  that  we  must  be  unlike  our 
present  selves  before  we  can  be  like  Him.  His  life  fits 
in  among  our  human  lives  like  a  jewel  which  is  so 
adapted  to  the  gold  into  which  it  is  set  that  nobody  can 
doubt  that  they  were  made  for  one  another,  and  yet 
which  so  far  fails  of  suiting  its  place  perfectly  that  we 
can  see  that  the  gold  has  been  bent  and  twisted  and 
must  be  twisted  back  again  in  order  to  accommodate 
it  perfectly.  He  is  at  once  our  satisfaction  and  our 
rebuke.  He  has  our  human  qualities ;  He  feels  our 
human  motives ;  but  in  Him  they  take  new  shapes.  It 
is  with  Him  as  it  is  with  our  best  and  noblest  friends. 
They  aU  first  claim  us  by  their  likeness,  and  then  shame 
and  instruct  us  by  their  unlikeness.  So  it  is  with  the 
manliness  of  Jesus. 


264  THE   MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST. 

Therefore  there  will  always  be  a  point  where  we  shall 
fail  if  we  depend  simply  upon  the  evident  manliness  of 
Jesus  to  make  men  believe  in  Him.  If  we  say  to  men, 
"  You  have  the  standard  in  your  own  manhood  to  judge 
Him  by,"  there  will  always  come  a  time  when,  before 
the  judgment  of  their  imperfect  manhood,  He  will  fail. 
But  what  we  may  say  is  :  "  You  have  the  standard  in 
your  hearts  to  recognize  Him  by.  Eecognize  Him  by 
that  and  make  Him  your  Master  and  it  will  be  His 
work  to  develop  and  refine  the  nature  which  first  knew 
Him  by  His  likeness,  so  that  by  and  by  it  shall  see  that 
in  the  things  in  which  He  seemed  to  be  most  unlike  to 
it,  He  still  is  and  has  always  been  the  pattern  and  com- 
pletion of  its  truest  self." 

I  should  like,  if  there  were  time,  to  turn  and  see  with 
you  how  in  His  life  on  earth,  which  is  recorded  in  the 
gospels,  Jesus  did  for  the  men  with  whom  He  came  in 
contact  just  this  same  double  work.  I  can  only  suggest 
to  you  the  many  illustrations  of  it.  There  are  three  things 
perhaps,  above  all  others,  by  which  men  think  that  they 
can  recognize  true  manliness.  The  first  is  independence ; 
the  second  is  bravery ;  and  the  third  is  generosity.  Now 
look  at  the  life  of  Jesus  as  I  hope  that  you  remember 
it  in  the  gospels.  There  is  independence  there  certainly. 
He  stood  almost  alone.  A  little  group  of  disciples  who 
only  half  understood  Him  were  His  company.  The  rest 
of  the  people  grew  more  and  more  hostile  as  His  career 
advanced.  He  more  and  more  outwent  His  friends  and 
more  and  more  enraged  His  enemies.  Yet  still  He 
stood  unmoved.  Men,  whether  they  loved  or  hated 
Him,  saw  that  He  carried  within  Himself  the  convic- 
tions and  determinations  by  which  He  lived.     It  was 


THE   MANLINESS   OF   CIIKIST.  265 

this,  first  of  all,  that  made  them  feel  His  strength.  "  He 
speaks  as  one  that  has  authority,"  the  people  cried  one 
day  when  His  discourse  was  finished.  Another  day  the 
Pharisees  came  to  Him  and  said,  "  Master,  we  know  that 
thou  art  true,  neither  carest  thou  for  any  man,  for  thou 
regardest  not  the  person  of  man."  In  all  this  there  was 
something  very  powerful.  This  independence  must  have 
impressed  the  finest  young  spirits  of  Capernaum  and 
Jerusalem  as  very  manly.  And  then,  when  they  were 
yielding  to  its  influence  and  gathering  round  Him,  think 
how  they  must  have  been  staggered  and  thrown  back  at 
hearing  this  same  independent  Master  declare  as  the 
very  central  secret  of  His  life  and  power  that  He  was 
utterly  dependent  on  a  nature  which  was  above  His 
own.  "  I  can  of  mine  own  self  do  nothing ;  as  I  hear  I 
judge."  "He  that  taketh  not  his  cross  and  followeth 
after  Me  cannot  be  My  disciple."  Only  the  very  finest 
spirits  among  His  followers  were  able  to  stand  firm  and 
loyal  while  the  manliness  which  had  attracted  them  at 
the  beginning  first  seemed  to  fail  them,  and  then  opened 
before  their  eyes  into  a  yet  nobler  type  of  manliness,  of 
which  dependence  upon  God  lay  at  the  very  heart. 

This  same  is  true  of  Christ's  courage.  Men  saw  Jesus 
stand  on  the  hill  at  Nazareth  among  a  crowd  of  hooting 
enemies.  They  saw  Him  stand  calmly  in  the  boat  on 
the  stormy  midnight  lake  and  never  tremble.  They 
saw  Him  face  the  gibbering  maniac  among  the  tombs. 
They  saw  Him  set  His  face  toward  Jerusalem  and  go  up 
thither  quietly,  knowing  that  there  He  would  be  crucified. 
They  said  to  one  another,  "  See  how  brave  He  is.  He 
does  not  know  anything  like  fear.  Behold,  what  man- 
liness ! "     And  then,  full  of  this  enthusiasm,  some  of 


266  THE   MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

them  witnessed  Gethsemane.  Tliey  heard  Him  pray  to 
be  released  from  the  approaching  pain.  They  watched 
Him  in  the  days  before  Gethsemane,  as  the  horror  of  the 
coming  death  gathered  around  Him.  "  Father,  save  me 
from  this  hour,"  they  heard  Him  cry.  It  is  impossible 
not  to  believe  that  their  conception  of  manliness  under- 
went first  a  shock  and  then  an  enlargement,  as  their  Mas- 
ter showed  them  that  sensitiveness  to  pain  is  a  true  and 
necessary  element  in  the  loftiest  courage. 

Or  yet  again,  think  of  Christ's  generosity.  An  open, 
tolerant,  and  kindly  temper,  that  welcomes  confidence, 
that  overlooks  faults,  that  makes  much  of  any  good  in 
other  men,  that  easily  forgives  wrong ;  that  is  a  part  of 
any  ordinary  notion  of  manliness.  And  this  the  men 
of  Palestine  found  unmistakably  in  Christ.  His  life  was 
always  open.  Whatever  He  had  He  would  share  with 
any  man.  "  If  any  one  shall  speak  a  word  against  the 
Son  of  Man,  it  shall  be  forgiven  him,"  He  said.  "  Come 
unto  Me,  come  unto  Me,"  He  kept  saying  as  He  went  up 
and  down  the  land.  And  to  this  frank,  bright,  open 
summons  men  did  come.  They  recognized  a  man  and 
gathered  round  His  manliness.  And  then  how  often, 
just  as  they  were  crowding  closest  to  Him,  He  said 
some  word  or  did  some  action  which  let  them  see  that, 
much  as  He  loved  them  and  wanted  to  welcome  them, 
He  loved  something  else  behind  them  more,  and  could 
not  welcome  them  completely  unless  they  met  Him  in 
the  broad  chambers  of  truth  and  self-devotion.  When 
Nicodemus  comes  to  Him,  Christ  turns  quickly  in  the 
midst  of  His  generous  greeting  and  says,  "  Except  a  man 
be  born  again  he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God." 
When  the  eager  young  man   comes  running  to  give 


THE   MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST.  267 

himself  to  the  new  Master,  the  Master  meets  him  al- 
most with  a  blow.  "  Foxes  have  holes,  and  birds  of  the 
air  have  nests,  but  the  Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to 
lay  His  head."  Men  must  have  been  perplexed  and 
staggered  by  such  words.  "  Is  He  then  not  generous, 
not  cordial  ?  Does  He  not  love  us  ?  Does  He  not  want 
us  ? "  they  must  have  said  to  one  another ;  and  only 
slowly,  as  they  dealt  with  Him,  the  deeper  law  of  gen- 
erosity must  have  opened  to  them,  that  no  man  loves 
his  brethren  completely  unless  he  loves  the  truth  better 
than  any  brother ;  that  no  man  desires  generously  for 
his  brethren  unless  he  desires  the  best  things  for  the 
best  part  of  them,  and  will  willingly  sacrifice  the  poorer 
things  which  belong  to  the  poorer  part  of  them  to  secure 
that  loftier  attainment. 

In  all  these  instances,  and  they  might  be  multipHed 
indefinitely,  the  same  thing,  I  think,  appears ;  and  that 
is  the  way  in  which  Christ's  manliness  first  claims  men ; 
and  then,  because  it  is  a  completer  manliness  than  they 
have  ever  seen,  it  puzzles  and  bewilders  men,  and  if 
they  are  not  truly  in  love  with  it,  repels  and  casts  them 
off ;  and  only  finally.  He  refines  and  elevates  their  idea 
of  what  it  is  to  be  manly  by  the  deeper  revelation  of 
Himself.  This  is  a  truth  which  it  seems  to  me  we  never 
can  lose  sight  of  when  we  talk  or  think  about  the  man- 
liness of  Jesus  and  its  power  over  men.  All  through 
the  history  of  Christ's  presentation  to  mankind  He  has 
attracted  men  and  He  has  repelled  men.  He  has  satis- 
fied and  He  has  puzzled  men's  standards  of  human  life. 
Both  of  the  two  are  true  and  natural  phenomena.  If  I 
could  take  Christ  to-day  —  take  Christ  Himself  and  not 
merely  some  man's  feebly  told  version  of  His  story  —  if 


268  THE   MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST. 

I  could  take  Christ  Himself  out  into  the  midst  of  a  group 
of  Western  roughs,  and  set  His  calm  presence  in  their 
midst,  what  should  I  see  ?  What  would  be  His  effect  on 
them  ?  They  would  know  His  manliness  certainly.  But 
would  they  apprehend  how  thorough  and  complete  His 
manliness  was?  They  would  call  Him  strong.  But 
would  they  not  also  call  Him  weak  ?  He  would  meet 
and  satisfy  the  best  of  the  standards  and  instincts  which 
He  would  find  all  ready  in  those  rugged  hearts ;  but  He 
would  certainly  disappoint  them  too ;  and  only  through 
disappointment,  and  the  revelation  of  Himself  to  hearts 
whose  confidence  in  the  completeness  of  their  own  first 
perceptions  had  been  shaken,  would  they  come  finally 
to  see  that  He  was  most  manly  in  those  very  things  in 
which  He  had  seemed  to  them  at  first  to  be  unmanly. 

And  so  it  is  that  Christ  has  always  come  to  men.  I 
think  that  it  is  very  like  the  way  in  which  He  came  to 
the  Jews.  Christ's  relation  to  Judaism  always  seems  to 
me  to  be  a  sort  of  miniature  and  illustration  of  the 
relation  in  which  He  stands  to  humanity.  He  was 
a  true  Jew.  Any  Jew  with  a  true  Jew's  heart  must 
have  owned  Him  for  a  fellow-Jew  without  a  doubt. 
But  He  was  too  true  a  Jew  to  satisfy  completely  the 
stunted  and  imperfect  Judaism  of  his  time.  A  Judaism 
so  far  below  the  actual  realization  of  its  own  best  idea 
could  not  but  be  puzzled  by  Him.  Only  the  best  of  the 
nation  was  able  gradually  to  be  taught  by  Him  the  full 
meaning  of  the  national  history,  the  full  depth  of  the 
national  idea.  The  life  of  St.  Paul,  and  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews,  show  what  the  complete  conception  of 
Judaism  was  capable  of  reaching  when  it  was  filled  out 
and  interpreted  by  the  complete  Jew,  Christ. 


THE   MANLINESS    OF   CHRIST.  269 

Let  this  be  the  picture  and  parable  of  what  the  man 
Christ  may  do  for  humanity.  So  truly  man  that  all 
mankind  must  know  His  manliness,  He  is  yet  so  much 
truer  man  than  all  other  men  that  it  is  only  by  the  rev- 
elation of  our  humanity  which  He  himself  makes  to  us 
that  we  ourselves  can  know  how  thoroughly  manly  He 
is.  Just  see  then  what  is  the  conclusion  to  which  the 
end  of  our  long  study  brings  us.  Is  it  not  this ;  that 
there  are  two  knowledges  of  Christ,  one  lower  and  one 
higher  ?  There  is  one  knowledge  by  which,  just  with 
our  ordinary  standards,  if  we  are  only  sincere  and  true, 
we  may  know  that  this  Man  is  a  man  above  all  other 
men,  and  take  Him  for  our  Master.  When,  with  that 
knowledge,  we  have  put  ourselves  into  His  power  so 
that  He  may  teach  us  and  complete  our  incomplete  con- 
ceptions, then  another  deeper  knowledge  comes.  We 
learn  to  know  not  merely  that  He  is  manly  because 
there  are  in  Him  those  things  which  we  as  men  most 
ardently  admire ;  but  also  that  we  can  be  truly  manly 
only  as  we  come  by  love  and  admiration  and  obedience 
to  share  the  completeness  of  character  which  is  in  Him. 
The  first  knowledge  brings  us  to  obedience.  The  second 
knowledge  is  the  power  of  spiritual  growth. 

Into  that  higher  knowledge  may  we  all  advance ; 
making  Christ  ours  first,  that  in  the  end  He  may  make 
us  His.  With  reverent  hands  may  we  handle  Him  and 
see  that  He  is  truly  manly,  that  He  really  wears  our 
humanity,  that  so  we  may  through  His  humanity  come 
to  the  Father  God  whom  He  reveals. 


XVI. 

HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS. 

"  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills,  from  whence  cometh  my  help."— 
Psalm  cxxi.  1. 

Many  people  seem  to  think  that  the  escape  from 
trouble  is  everything,  without  regard  to  the  door  by 
which  escape  is  made ;  and  that  the  finding  of  help  in 
need  is  everything,  no  matter  who  may  be  the  person 
of  whom  the  help  is  sought.  But  really  the  door  by 
which  we  escape  from  trouble  is  of  more  importance 
than  the  escape  itself  There  are  many  troubles  from 
which  it  is  better  for  a  man  not  to  escape  than  to  escape 
wrongly  ;  and  there  are  many  difficulties  in  which  it  is 
better  to  struggle  and  to  fail  than  to  be  helped  by  a 
wrong  hand.  In  these  first  words  of  one  of  the  greatest 
psalms  of  David,  the  nobleness  which  we  immediately 
feel  seems  to  lie  in  this,  that  David  will  seek  help  only 
from  the  highest  source.  "  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto 
the  hills,  from  whence  cometh  my  help."  Nothing  less 
than  God's  help  can  really  meet  his  needs.  He  will  not 
peer  into  the  valleys.  He  will  not  turn  to  fellow-men, 
to  nature,  to  work,  to  pleasure,  as  if  they  had  the  relief  he 
needed.  "  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills  from 
whence  cometh  my  help.  My  help  cometh  from  the 
Lord  who  hath  made  heaven  and  earth." 

How  instantly  we  feel  the  greatness  of  a  man  who 


HELP   FROM  THE   HILLS.  271 

could  write  such  words  as  those.  He  is  great  in  his 
understanding  of  his  own  essential  human  greatness. 
Not  every  man  is  able  to  think  so  loftily  of  himself  as 
to  realize  that  in  every  true  sorrow  of  his  there  is  some- 
thing which  only  God  "  who  hath  made  heaven  and 
earth  "  can  comfort ;  and  that  in  every  weakness  of  his 
there  is  something  which  only  God  "  who  hath  made 
heaven  and  earth  "  can  help.  This  is  what  we  mean,  I 
think,  in  large  part,  when  we  so  often  say  that  trouble 
tests  men  and  shows  what  sort  of  men,  they  are.  It  is 
the  time  of  need  that  lets  us  see  what  men  think  of 
themselves,  how  seriously  they  contemplate  their  own 
existence,  how  they  estimate  their  need,  by  letting  us 
see  where  they  seek  their  help.  Have  you  never  been 
struck  by  it  ?  One  mourner  in  the  hour  of  bereavement 
rushes  into  society  or  to  Europe ;  another  turns  to  self- 
forgetting  charity  and  spiritual  thoughtfulness.  One 
bankrupt  begins  to  abuse  the  world  for  prospering  while 
he  is  failing ;  another  rejoices,  and  finds  the  relief  of  his 
own  misery  in  rejoicing,  that  some  part  of  the  world,  at 
least,  is  better  off  by  the  action  of  the  same  forces  which 
have  ruined  him.  One  man  turns  instinctively  to  the 
lowest  and  another  to  the  highest,  in  his  need ;  and  so  it 
is  that,  in  their  own  way,  our  hours  of  need  become  our 
judgment-days. 

I  want  to  speak  this  morning  of  the  duty  of  every 
man  to  seek  help  from  the  highest  in  every  department 
of  his  life.  I  will  not  say  only  from  the  highest,  for 
we  shall  see,  I  think,  how  the  lower  helps  come  in  in 
their  true  places ;  but  we  need  to  be  reminded  that  no 
trouble  is  fully  met  and  no  difficulty  thoroughly  mas- 
tered unless  the  trouble  is  filled  with  the  profoundest 


272  HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS. 

consolation  and  the  difficulty  conquered  with  the  great- 
est strength  of  which  its  nature  makes  it  capable.  It  is 
the  forgetfulness  of  this  truth,  I  think,  which  causes  a 
large  part  of  the  superficialness  and  ineffectiveness  of 
all  our  lives. 

For  the  truth  rests  upon  another  truth  which  we  are 
also  always  ready  to  forget,  which  is  that  the  final  pur- 
pose of  all  consolation  and  help  is  revelation.  The 
reason  why  we  are  led  into  trouble  and  out  again  is  not 
merely  that  we  may  value  happiness  the  more  from 
having  lost  it  once  and  found  it  again,  but  that  we 
may  know  something  which  we  could  not  know  except 
by  that  teaching,  that  we  may  bear  upon  our  nature 
some  impress  which  could  not  have  been  stamped  ex- 
cept on  natures  just  so  softened  to  receive  it.  There 
stands  your  man  who  has  been  through  some  terrible 
experience  and  found  relief.  Perhaps  it  was  a  terrible 
sickness  in  which  he  was  drawn  back  from  the  very 
gates  of  death.  Perhaps  it  was  some  mighty  task  which 
the  world  seemed  to  single  him  out  to  do,  to  fail  in 
which  would  have  been  ruin,  and  in  which  it  seemed  at 
one  time  certain  that  he  must  fail.  Perhaps  it  was  a 
midnight  darkness  that  settled  down  over  all  truth,  so 
that  it  seemed  hopeless  ever  again  to  know  anything 
truly  of  God  or  man.  Whatever  it  was,  the  experience 
has  come  and  passed.  There  stands  your  man,  relieved, 
released,  out  in  the  sunlight  on  the  other  side  of  it. 
What  do  you  ask  of  him  as  he  stands  there  ?  Is  your 
sense  of  fitness  satisfied  if  he  is  only  relieved,  released ; 
if  he  is  only  like  a  man  who,  after  a  hard  fight  with  the 
waves,  has  got  his  footing  once  more  just  where  he  was 
when  he  was  swept  away  ?     Certainly  not.     The  human 


HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS.  273 

sense  of  fitness  asks  more  than  that.  He  must  have 
seen  something  in  the  dark,  or  in  the  transition  from  the 
dark  back  to  the  light  again,  which  pure,  unclouded 
light  could  not  have  shown  him.  Into  this  kneaded 
and  tortured  life  there  must  have  been  pressed  some 
knowledge  which  the  life  in  its  best  health  was  too 
hard  and  unsensitive  to  take,  some  knowledge  which 
the  life,  restored  to  health,  shall  carry  as  the  secret  of 
inexhaustible  happiness  forth  into  eternity.  Without 
these  revelations  the  midnight  and  the  torture  would 
be  inexplicable  and  hideous.  But  these  revelations 
depend  upon  the  way  the  soul's  eyes  look  for  help.  A 
man  may  stand  in  the  darkness  looking  at  the  ground, 
and  when  the  dawn  gathers  round  him  he  will  only  be 
glad  of  the  light,  but  will  have  no  perpetual  and  pre- 
cious memory  of  sunrise.  This  is  the  real  reason  why 
no  release  from  difliculty  or  trouble  is  all  that  it  might 
be  to  us,  unless  we  have  sought  it  from  the  highest  and 
thank  the  highest  for  it  when  it  comes.  The  eye  comes 
out  of  the  darkness  trained  by  looking  up.  Let  your- 
self be  helped  by  the  noblest  who  can  help  you,  that 
you  may  know  the  noblest  with  that  intimate  knowl- 
edge with  which  the  helped  knows  the  helper,  and  that 
the  power  of  knowing  nobleness  may  be  awakened  and 
developed  in  you. 

1.  But  we  shall  understand  this  better  and  feel  it  more 
strongly  if  we  pass  at  once  to  special  applications  of  our 
truth  and  see  it  in  its  workings.  Take  first  the  ever- 
lasting struggle  with  Temptation.  Every  man  who  is 
more  than  a  brute  knows  what  it  is.  All  men  whose 
consciences  are  not  entirely  dead  engage  in  it  with  some 
degree  of  earnestness.    But  how  perfectly  clear  it  is  that 


274  HELP  FROM   THE  HILLS. 

any  man  who  undertakes  that  struggle  may  look  either 
to  the  valleys  or  to  the  hills  for  help,  may  call  the  lower 
or  the  higher  powers  to  his  aid.  Suppose  a  man  is 
wrestling  with  his  passions.  Some  miserable  dissipation 
which  he  never  hates  and  despises  so  much  as  just 
when  he  is  ready  to  yield  to  it,  is  haunting  him  all  the 
time.  His  lust  is  all  awake.  His  appetite  is  one  day 
smiling  and  persuasive,  the  next  day  arrogant  and  bru- 
tal. "  You  must,  you  shall  give  way  to  me,"  it  seems 
to  cry  to  him.  But  still  he  fights.  And  in  his  weakness 
he  looks  round  for  help.  Where  shall  he  find  it  ?  It 
seems  to  lie  close  by  him,  in  the  very  structure  of  the 
body  in  which  the  lust  is  raging.  There  are  the  laws 
of  health.  Shall  not  they  be  his  safeguard  ?  Let  him 
be  convinced  that  if  he  gives  himself  the  bad  indulgence 
which  he  craves,  he  will  feel  the  quick  answer  in  certain 
pain  and  drag  a  miserable  body  through  a  wretched  life 
to  a  dishonored  grave.  Let  him  know  that,  and  will  it 
not  give  him  the  strength  for  resistance  that  he  needs  ? 
No  doubt  it  will  help  him,  though  it  will  not  be  his 
highest  help.  Many  a  man  is  held  back  to-day  from 
iniquity  which  his  whole  heart  desires  by  the  inevitable 
prospect  of  the  pain,  the  sickness,  the  misery,  the  death, 
that  an  indulgence  will  incur.  Indeed  it  seems  as  if 
some  people  thought  that  herein  lay  the  gospel  for  the 
coming  age ;  that  just  as  soon  as  men  had  learned  the  laws 
of  health  completely,  vice  would  be  all  abolished,  and 
temperance  and  purity  reign  where  the  passions  have 
so  long  trodden  them  under  foot.  Or  take  another  case, 
and  see  a  man  tempted  to  dishonesty  in  some  dealings 
with  his  fellow-men.  Where  shall  he  turn  for  strength 
to  his  integrity  ?     Let  him  picture  to  himself  the  dis- 


HELP  FROM  THE  HILLS.  275 

grace  that  must  come  if  he  is  found  out,  the  loss  of  repu- 
tation and  of  his  fellow-men's  esteem.  Let  him  imagine 
himself  walking  the  streets  a  despised,  avoided  man, 
with  scornful  fingers  pointed  at  the  detected  cheat. 
Such  visions,  such  fears  as  those,  may  help  him,  and  he 
may  resist  the  temptation  to  fraud,  and  keep  his  integ- 
rity unsoiled.  Or  yet  again  when  a  man  is  tempted  to 
cruelty  or  quarrelsomeness  he  may  resist  because  he 
considers  that,  after  all,  the  discomfort  of  a  quarrel  is 
greater  than  the  satisfaction  of  a  grudge  indulged.  Or 
one  who  feels  the  weakness  of  indolence  creeping  over 
him  may  put  himself  into  the  midst  of  the  most  active 
and  energetic  men  he  knows  and  get  the  contagion  of 
their  energy  and  be  kept  alive  and  awake  by  very 
shame.  All  these  are  perfectly  legitimate  helpers  for 
the  man  beset  by  his  temptation.  The  fear  of  pain,  the 
fear  of  disgrace,  the  fear  of  discomfort,  and  the  shame 
that  comes  with  the  loftiest  companionship, — we  may 
have  to  appeal  to  them  all  for  support  in  the  hours, 
which  come  so  often  in  our  lives,  when  we  are  very 
weak.  But,  after  all,  the  appeal  to  these  helpers  is  not 
the  final  cry  of  the  soul.  They  are  like  the  bits  of  wood 
that  the  drowning  sailor  clutches  when  he  must  have 
something  at  the  instant  or  he  perishes.  They  are  not 
the  solid  shore  on  which  at  last  he  drops  his  tired  feet 
and  knows  that  he  is  safe.  Or  rather,  perhaps,  the  man 
who  trusts  tliem  is  like  a  dweller  in  some  valley  down 
which  a  freshet  pours,  who  drives  the  stakes  of  his  im- 
perilled tent  deeper  into  the  ground ;  not  like  one  who 
leaves  the  valley  altogether  and  escapes  to  the  moun- 
tain where  the  freshet  never  comes.  "I  will  lift  up 
mine  eyes  unto  the  hills,"  says  David.     Not  until  a 


276  HELP   FROM  THE   HILLS. 

man  has  laid  hold  "  behind  and  above  everything  else  '* 
upon  the  absolute  assurance  that  the  right  is  right  and 
that  the  God  of  righteousness  will  give  His  strength  to 
any  feeblest  will  in  all  His  universe  which  tries  to  do 
the  right  in  simple  unquestioning  consecration ;  not  until 
he  has  thus  appealed  to  duty  and  to  the  dear  God  of 
whose  voice  she  is  the  "  stern  daughter ; "  not  till  then 
has  he  summoned  to  his  aid  the  final  perfect  help; 
only  then  has  he  really  looked  up  to  the  hills. 

I  have  already  said  that  when  a  tried  and  tempted 
soul  thus  flees  to  God  and  to  the  absolute  righteousness, 
he  does  not  cast  the  lower  helps  away.  Still  as  he 
looks  up  to  the  hills  his  eye  is  led  there  along  the  grad- 
ually rising  ground  of  lower  motives.  The  man  who 
keeps  his  purity  and  honesty  and  strength  because  he 
is  God's  child  and  must  do  his  Father's  will,  may  still 
care  for  his  health  and  his  reputation  and  cultivate  a 
healthy  shame  before  his  fellow-men.  But  these  are 
not  the  king  he  serves.  They  are  only,  as  it  were,  the 
servants  who  bring  him  the  king's  orders  ;  to  be  heeded 
and  obeyed,  but  not  for  themselves  but  for  their  king 
who  sends  them. 

This  will  seem  clear  enough  if  we  remember  how 
there  come  times  in  all  the  deepest  lives  when  the  ser- 
vant has  to  be  disobeyed  in  order  that  the  obedience  to 
the  king  may  be  complete.  The  preservation  of  health, 
the  care  for  reputation,  cannot  be  the  final  safeguards 
and  citadels  of  purity  and  integrity,  because  there  come 
times  in  which,  just  in  order  that  purity  may  be  kept, 
health  and  even  life  have  to  be  cast  away.  Just  in  order 
that  a  man  may  still  be  upright  he  has  to  walk  directly 
across  his  fellow-men's  standards  and  forfeit  their  regard. 


HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS.  277 

But  the  time  never  comes  when  a  man  to  be  good  has 
to  disobey  God.  Therefore  it  is  that  obedience  to  God 
is  the  only  final  and  infallible  help  of  the  soul  in  its 
struggle  with  temptation.  The  rest  are  the  fortifications 
around  the  city.  Sometime  their  destruction  may  be 
the  only  way  to  save  the  city  which  they  were  meant  to 
guard ;  but  the  heart  of  the  city  itself,  the  citadel  where 
the  king  sits,  the  city  cannot  perish  so  long  as  that  is 
safe ;  and  when  that  falls,  the  city's  life  is  over. 

I  beg  you,  my  dear  friends,  old  men  and  young  men, 
all  surrounded  with  temptations  which  will  not  give 
you  rest,  to  know  and  never  to  forget  that  there  is  no 
safety  that  is  final  and  complete  until  your  eye  is  fixed 
upon  the  highest,  until  it  is  the  fear  and  love  of  God 
that  is  keeping  you  from  sin.  It  is  good  for  every  man 
to  care  for  his  life  and  his  reputation.  Let  the  doctors 
show  us  more  and  more  how  every  wrong  we  do  our 
bodies  shortens  and  impairs  our  life.  Let  experience 
teach  us  more  and  more  that  he  who  is  mean  and  base 
will  surely  some  day  find  himself  despised.  But  these 
are  not  enough.  The  rectitude  which  they  alone  protect 
is  not  the  highest  rectitude.  It  is  a  selfish,  calculating 
thing.  And  it  is  wholly  possible  that  they  may  them- 
selves become  the  betrayers  of  the  rectitude  which  they 
are  sent  to  guard ;  so  that  a  man,  to  keep  his  life,  may  do 
his  body  wrong,  and  to  keep  his  reputation  may  go 
down  into  the  most  miserable  meanness.  You  are  never 
wholly  safe  until  your  eye  is  fixed  on  God,  and  until  it 
is  because  He  is  so  awful  and  so  dear  that  you  will  not 
do  the  sin  which  tempts  you. 

2,  I  pass  on  to  speak  about  another  of  the  emergen- 
cies of  life  in  which  it  makes  vast  difference  whether  the 


278  HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS. 

soul  looks  to  the  hills  for  help  or  to  the  valleys.  Not 
merely  in  temptation  but  in  sorrow  a  man  may  seek  the 
assistance  of  the  highest,  or  of  some  other  power  which 
is  far  lower.  What  does  it  mean  when,  the  blow  of  some 
great  grief  having  fallen  on  a  man,  his  friends  gather 
round  him  and  dwell  upon  the  blessed  relief  that  time 
will  bring  him  ?  Nay,  the  man  speaks  to  his  own  heart 
and  says :  "  Let  me  drag  on  awhile  and  time  will  help 
me.  It  will  not  be  so  bad  when  the  days  have  made 
me  used  to  it.  Let  me  live  on  and  the  burden  will 
grow  lighter."  As  these  words  are  often  said,  they  are 
unutterably  sad  and  dreadful.  If  they  mean  anything 
distinct,  they  mean  that  by  and  by  the  poor  man  will 
forget.  The  face  he  misses  now  will  grow  more  dim 
before  his  memory.  The  sweet  music  of  the  days  that 
he  has  lost  will  grow  fainter  and  fainter  in  the  distance. 
How  terrible  that  comfort  is.  How  the  true  soul  cries 
out  against  it :  "  1  do  not  want  relief  which  comes  by 
forgetting.  I  will  not  seek  comfort  in  the  thought  that 
my  affection  is  too  feeble  and  brutish  to  keep  its  vivid- 
ness forever.  Let  me  remember  forever,  even  though 
everlasting  memory  only  means  everlasting  pain.  You 
add  a  new  pang  to  my  sorrow  when  you  tell  me  that 
some  day  I  shall  escape  it  by  forgetfulness."  That  is 
the  cry  of  every  noble  soul.  And  no  less  does  it  break 
out  in  remonstrance  when  the  other  relief,  the  relief  oi 
distraction,  is  offered  to  it.  "  Come,  busy  yourself  in 
some  absorbing  occupation,  take  some  exacting  work  or 
some  fascinating  pleasure,  and  so  your  pain  shall  lose  its 
hold  on  you."  That  is  only  the  same  thing  in  another 
form.  That  is  only  offering  the  man  escape  by  a  side 
door  instead  of  by  the  far  off  gate  through  which  the 


HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS.  279 

other  offer  promised  him  that  he  should  some  day  go 
forth  into  forgetfuhiess  of  his  grief.  No  wonder  that 
the  heart,  with  such  relief  set  before  it,  grows  jealous  of 
the  proffered  distraction  and  morbidly  shuts  itself  in 
upon  its  sorrow  and  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  those 
occupations  which  it  is  told  are  to  dissolve  and  melt 
away  the  pain  which,  with  all  its  paiufulness,  still  has 
at  its  heart  the  preciousness  of  love.  All  this  is  look- 
ing to  the  valleys  and  the  depths  for  comfort.  "  I  wiD. 
lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills,"  says  David.  By  and 
i)y  the  soul,  vexed  and  distressed  by  its  poor  comforters, 
turns  away  from  them.  They  have  bid  it  avoid  its  grief, 
and  the  very  horror  which  their  advice  has  brought  has 
shown  the  soul  where  its  real  relief  must  lie.  It  must 
be  somewhere  in  the  grief  that  the  help  of  the  grief  is 
hidden.  It  must  be  in  some  discovery  of  the  divine  side 
of  the  sorrow  that  the  consolation  of  the  sorrow  will  be 
found.  It  is  a  wondrous  change  when  a  man  stops  ask- 
ing of  his  distress,  "  How  can  I  throw  this  off  ? "  and 
asks  instead,  "What  did  God  mean  by  sending  this  ?" 
Then,  he  may  well  believe  that  time  and  work  will  help 
him.  Time,  with  its  necessary  calming  of  the  first  wild 
surface-tumult,  will  let  him  look  deeper  and  ever  deeper 
into  the  divine  purpose  of  the  sorrow,  will  let  its  deep- 
est and  most  precious  meanings  gradually  come  forth  so 
that  he  may  see  them.  Work,  done  in  the  sorrow,  will 
bring  him  into  ever  new  relations  to  the  God  in  whom 
alone  the  full  interpretation  and  relief  of  the  sorrow  lies. 
Time  and  work,  not  as  means  of  escape  from  distress  but 
as  the  hands  in  which  distress  shall  be  turned  hither 
and  thither  that  the  light  of  God  may  freely  play  upon 
it ;  time  and  work  so  acting  as  servants  of  God,  not  as 


280  HELP    FROM   THE    HILLS. 

substitutes  for  God,  are  full  of  unspeakably  precioua 
ministries  to  the  suffering  soul.  But  the  real  relief,  the 
only  final  comfort,  is  God ;  and  He  relieves  the  soul  always 
in  its  suffering,  not  from  its  suffering  ;  nay,  he  relieves 
the  soul  by  its  suffering,  by  the  new  knowledge  and  pos- 
session of  Himself  wliich  could  come  only  through  that 
atmosphere  of  pain. 

There  are  no  times  in  life  when  opportunity,  the  chance 
to  be  and  do,  gathers  so  richly  about  the  soul  as  when  it 
has  to  suffer.  Then  everything  depends  on  whether  the 
man  turns  to  the  lower  or  the  higher  helps.  If  he  re- 
sorts to  mere  expedients  and  tricks,  the  opportunity  is 
lost.  He  comes  out  no  richer  nor  greater ;  nay,  he  comes 
out  harder,  poorer,  smaller  for  his  pain.  But  if  he  turns 
to  God,  the  hour  of  suffering  is  the  turning  hour  of  his 
life.  Opportunity  opens  before  him  as  the  ocean  opens 
before  one  who  sails  out  of  a  river.  Men  have  done  the 
best  and  worst,  the  noblest  and  the  basest  things  the 
world  has  seen,  under  the  pressure  of  excessive  pain. 
Everything  depended  on  whether  they  looked  to  the 
depths  or  to  the  hills  for  help. 

3.  Again,  our  truth  is  nowhere  more  true  than  in  the 
next  region  where  we  watch  its  application,  the  region 
of  doubt  and  perplexity  of  mind.  A  man  is  uncertain 
what  is  true,  what  he  ought  to  believe,  especially  about 
religion,  the  most  important  of  all  subjects,  and,  as  he 
thinks  sometimes,  the  most  uncertain  as  it  is  the  most 
important.  He  wants  help.  He  wants  some  power  to 
lead  him  into  certainty.  Where  shall  he  turn  ?  At 
once  the  lower  resource  presents  itself  on  every  side.  He 
is  offered  authority.  Close  by  his  side  starts  up  some 
man,  some  church,  which  says,  "  I  have  the  truth.     It 


HELP   FROM   THE   HILLS.  281 

has  been  given  to  me  to  tell  to  you.  Believe  what 
I  declare  simply  as  I  declare  it  and  your  doubt  is 
gone.  The  trouble  is  all  over."  It  seems  an  easy  thing 
to  do.  Nothing  is  stranger  than  the  satisfied  M^ay  in 
which  men  who,  on  every  other  subject,  use  their  own 
minds  and  seek  the  truth  by  its  own  proper  methods, 
here  in  religion  only  seem  to  ask  that  some  one  shall 
speak  with  overwhelming  positiveness  and  they  will  be- 
lieve him.  Indeed  here,  in  religion,  men  seem  to  bring 
forth  their  most  wanton  credulity  and  their  most  wanton 
scepticism.  Here,  in  religion,  is  where  you  can  find  men 
believing  without  any  evidence  at  all ;  and,  again,  disbe- 
lieving against  all  the  evidence  which  the  nature  of  the 
case  admits.  A  very  large  part  of  the  power  of  the 
Church  of  Rome  to-day  comes  simply  here,  that  men, 
bewildered  and  perplexed,  demand  an  infallible  author- 
ity upon  religious  things ;  and  since  the  Church  of 
Eome  stands  forth  the  loudest  and  most  confident  and 
most  splendid  claimant  of  infallibility,  they  give  them- 
selves to  her.  It  is  not  that  they  have  convinced  them- 
selves that  she  is  infallible.  It  is  rather  that  she  alone 
really  claims  to  be ;  and  they  have  started  with  the 
assumption  that  an  infallible  authority  they  must  have, 
and  here  is  the  only  one  that  offers.  Now  of  such  an 
escape  from  doubt  as  that  what  shall  we  say  ?  The 
deepest,  truest  thing  that  we  can  say  about  it  is  that  it 
is  not  a  real  escape,  because  that  into  which  it  brings 
the  soul  is  not  really  and  properly  belief.  "What 
should  we  think,"  says  a  wise  writer,  "  of  any  man  who 
knew  Euclid,  but  only  accepted  the  demonstrations  on 
the  authority  of  the  book?"  He  who  holds  a  truth  of 
religion,  not  because  he  himself  has  found  it  to  be  true 


282  HELP  FROM  THE   HILLS. 

but  because  some  trusted  friend  here  by  his  side,  or 
some  great  father  in  the  ancient  church,  or  some  council 
which  voted  on  it  once,  has  told  him  it  is  true,  does  not 
really  and  properly  hold  the  truth.  He  has  no  more 
escaped  from  doubt  than  you  have  escaped  the  rain  when 
you  have  crept  under  some  other  man's  umbrella  who 
for  the  moment  is  going  your  way,  but  who  may  any 
moment  turn  aside,  and  whose  umbrella  in  the  mean  time 
is  not  big  enough  for  two. 

And,  beside  this,  even  if  the  condition  which  is  reached 
by  pure  submission  to  authority  could  properly  be  called 
faith,  it  would  still  be  weak  by  the  lack  of  all  that  per- 
sonal effort  after  truth,  that  struggle  to  be  serious  and 
fair,  that  athletic,  patient,  self-denying  life  which  is  the 
subjective  element  of  faith ;  as  true  and  necessary  a  part 
of  the  full  act  as  is  the  acceptance  of  any  most  perfectly 
proved  objective  truth.  No ;  he  who  looks  to  authority 
for  his  religion  is  not  lifting  up  his  eyes  unto  the  hills. 
That  comes  only  when  a  seeker  after  truth  dares  to  be- 
lieve that  God  Himself  sends  to  every  one  of  His  chil- 
dren the  truth  which  that  child  needs  ;  that  while  God 
uses  the  Bible,  the  church,  and  the  experience  of  other 
souls  as  channels  for  His  teaching,  He  Himself  is  always 
behind  them  all  as  the  great  teacher  and  the  final  source 
of  truth ;  that  He  bids  each  child  in  His  family  use  the 
powers  which  belong  distinctively  to  him,  and  apprehend 
truth  in  that  special  form  in  which  the  Father  chooses 
to  send  it  into  his  life.  It  is  this  directness  of  rela- 
tionship to  God,  it  is  this  appeal  of  the  life  directly  to 
Him,  it  is  this  certainty  that  no  authority  on  earth  is  so 
sacred  but  that  every  soul  may  —  nay,  that  every  soul 
must — judge  of  its  teachings  by  its  own  God-given  facuL 


HELP  FROM  THE   HILLS.  283 

ties  enlightened  and  purified  by  devout  consecration  to 
God ;  it  is  this  which  makes  the  true  experience  of  faith. 
What  comes  to  the  soul  in  such  an  experience  is  not 
infallible  certainty  on  all  the  articles  on  which  man 
craves  enlightenment,  but  it  is  something  better.  It 
is  an  hourly  communion  with  the  Lord  of  truth.  It  is 
a  constant  anxiety  to  turn  the  truth  which  He  has 
already  shown  into  obedience,  and  a  constant  eagerness 
to  see  what  new  truth  He  may  be  making  known.  It  is 
a  thorough  truthfulness.  I  beg  you,  my  dear  friends, 
not  to  believe,  because  of  the  supposed  need  of  infallible 
certainty  in  all  religious  questions,  that  therefore  religion 
is  a  matter  of  authority.  There  is  no  authority  short  of 
God.  Look  up  to  Him.  Expect  His  teaching.  And 
though  between  you  and  the  hill-tops  clouds  of  uncer- 
tainty may  come,  never  let  them  make  you  turn  your 
eyes  away  in  discouragement,  or  think  that  on  the  earth 
you  can  find  that  guidance  which  is  not  a  thing  of 
earth  but  which  must  come  to  us  from  heaven. 

4.  I  want  to  speak  in  very  few  words  of  only  one 
more  application  of  our  truth.  It  is  with  reference  to 
man's  escape  from  sin.  There  is  a  need  of  help  which, 
when  any  soul  has  once  felt  it,  seems  to  surpass  all 
others.  "  What  shall  become  of  the  wickedness  that  I 
have  done  ?  How  shall  I  cast  my  sin  away  and  be  once 
more  as  if  I  had  not  sinned  ?  "  And  then  there  always 
have  stood  up,  there  always  will  stand  up,  two  answers. 
One  answer  says,  "  God  will  forgive  your  sin.  He  will 
remit  its  penalties.  He  will  not  punish  you.  In  view 
of  this  or  that  persuasion  every  penalty  of  sin  is  lifted 
off  and  you  are  free."  The  other  answer  says,  "  You 
cannot  be  wholly  free  from  sin  till  you  cease  to  be  sinful 


284  HELP  FROM   THE   HILLS. 

No  taking  away  of  penalties  can  free  you.  You  must 
be  another  creature.  God  will  give  you  a  new  heart  if 
you  will  be  obedient  to  Him.  Every  release  from  punish- 
ment has  value  only  as  it  wins  your  grateful  soul  for 
Him  who  pardons  you  and  makes  you  ready  to  receive 
the  new  heart  which  He  has  to  give."  No  doubt  both 
answers  have  their  truth.  But  no  doubt  also,  the  second 
answer  promises  a  more  divine  and  perfect  mercy  than 
the  first.  The  help  of  transformation  is  a  loftier  benefit 
than  the  help  of  remission.  I  can  picture  to  myself  the 
first  without  the  second.  I  can  image  a  soul  with  all 
its  penalties  removed,  but  yet  not  saved.  I  cannot  pic- 
ture to  myself  the  second  without  the  first.  I  cannot 
imagine  a  soul  in  any  region  of  God's  universe,  turned 
from  its  wickedness  and  made  holy  by  His  grace  and 
yet  bearing  still  the  spiritual  penalties  of  the  sins  which 
it  committed  long  ago.  Therefore  it  is  that  the  best 
spiritual  ambition  seeks  directly  holiness.  It  seeks 
pardon  as  a  means  to  holiness.  So  it  lifts  its  eyes  up 
at  once  to  the  very  highest  hills.  I  wish  that  I  could 
make  the  thoughtful  men,  especially  the  young  men 
who  are  just  deep  in  perplexity  about  Christianity,  see 
this.  You  must  not  think  of  Christ's  redemption  as  a 
great  scheme  to  save  you  from  the  punishment  of  sin. 
That  is  too  negative.  That  is  too  low.  It  is  the  great 
opening  of  the  celestial  possibilities  of  man.  Expect  to 
escape,  know  that  you  can  escape,  from  the  consequences 
of  having  been  wicked,  only  by  being  good.  Crave  the 
most  perfect  mercy.  Ask  for  the  new  life  as  the  only 
real  release  from  death.  So  only  can  your  religion  glow 
with  enthusiasm  and  open  into  endless  hope. 


HELP  FROM  THE   HILLS.  285 

In  these  four  illustrations  then  I  have  tried  to  en- 
force the  message  that  I  wanted  to  bring.  O  for  that 
spirit  which  is  content  with  nothing  less  or  lower  than 
the  highest  help.  To  turn  in  temptation  directly  to  the 
power  of  God  ;  to  cry  out  in  sorrow  for  God's  company  ; 
to  be  satisfied  in  doubt  with  nothing  short  of  the  as- 
surance that  God  gives ;  to  know  that  there  is  no  real 
escape  from  sin  except  in  being  made  holy  by  God's 
holiness,  —  these  are  what  make  the  man's  complete 
salvation.  I  turn  to  Jesus,  and  in  all  His  human  life 
there  seems  to  me  nothing  more  divine  than  the  in- 
stinctive and  unerring  way  in  which  He  always  reached 
up  to  the  highest,  and  refused  to  be  satisfied  with  any 
lower  help.  In  the  desert  the  Devil  offered  Him  bread, 
good  wholesome  bread.  Apparently  He  could  have  had 
it  if  He  would ;  but  He  replied,  "  Man  shall  not  live  by 
bread  alone  but  by  the  word  of  God."  At  Jacob's  well 
His  disciples  brought  Him  food  and  said,  "  Master,  eat ; " 
but  He  answered,  "  I  have  meat  to  eat  which  ye  know 
not  of  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  Him  that  sent 
Me."  On  the  cross  they  held  up  to  Him  the  sponge  full 
of  vinegar ;  but  the  thirst  that  was  in  Him  demanded 
a  deeper  satisfaction,  and  He  gave  His  soul  to  His  Father 
and  finished  His  obedient  work.  So  it  was  everywhere 
with  Him.  The  souls  beside  Him  found  their  helps 
and  satisfactions  in  the  superficial  things  of  earth. 
They  laid  hold  on  petty  distractions,  outside  ceremonies, 
superficial  assurances,  and  so  seemed  to  forget  their  cares 
and  qiiestionings.  He  could  not  rest  anywhere  till  He 
had  found  God  His  Father,  and  laid  the  burden  which 
was  crushing  Him,  into  the  bosom  of  the  eternal  strength 
and  the  exhaustless  love. 


286  HELP   FKOM  THE  HILLS. 

It  is  your  privilege  and  mine,  as  children  of  God,  to 
be  satisfied  with  no  help  but  the  help  of  the  highest. 
When  we  are  content  to  seek  strength  or  comfort  or 
truth  or  salvation  from  any  hand  short  of  God's,  we  are 
disowning  our  childhood  and  dishonoring  our  Father. 

It  is  better  to  be  restless  and  unsatisfied  than  to  find 
rest  and  satisfaction  in  anything  lower  than  the  highest. 
But  we  need  not  be  restless  or  unsatisfied.  There  is  a 
rest  in  expectation,  a  satisfaction  in  the  assurance  that 
the  highest  belongs  to  us  though  we  have  not  reached  it 
yet.  That  rest  in  expectation  we  may  all  have  now 
if  we  believe  in  God  and  know  we  are  His  childrea 
Every  taste  of  Him  that  we  have  ever  had  becomes  a 
prophecy  of  His  perfect  giving  of  Himself  to  us.  It  is 
as  when  a  pool  lies  far  up  in  the  dry  rocks,  and  hears 
the  tide  and  knows  that  her  refreshment  and  replenish- 
ing is  coming.  How  patient  she  is.  The  other  pools 
nearer  the  shore  catch  the  sea  first,  and  she  hears 
them  leaping  and  laughing,  but  she  waits  patiently. 
She  knows  the  tide  will  not  turn  back  till  it  has  reached 
her.  And  by  and  by  the  blessed  moment  comes.  The 
last  ridge  of  rock  is  overwashed.  The  stream  pours  in ; 
at  first  a  trickling  thread  sent  only  at  the  supreme 
effort  of  the  largest  wave ;  but  by  and  by  the  great 
sea  in  its  fulness.  It  gives  the  waiting  pool  itself  and 
she  is  satisfied.  So  it  will  certainly  be  with  us  if  we 
wait  for  the  Lord,  however  He  delays,  and  refuse  to  let 
ourselves  be  satisfied  with  any  supply  but  Him. 


XVII. 

THE  CURSE  OF  MEROZ. 

"Curse  ye  Meroz,  saith  tlie  angel  of  the  Lord,  Curse  ye  bitterly  the 
inhabitants  thereof ;  because  they  came  not  to  the  help  of  the  Lord, 
to  the  help  of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty. "  —  Judges  v.  23. 

Deborah  and  Barak  had  gained  a  great  victory  in 
the  plain  of  Esdraelon  and  along  the  skirts  of  the  moun- 
tain of  Little  Hermon.  Their  enemy  Sisera  had  fled 
away  completely  routed,  and  the  wild,  fierce,  strong 
woman  who  "judged  Israel  in  those  days,"  and  the 
captain  of  the  Israelitish  army,  sang  a  splendid  proud 
song  of  triumph.  In  it  they  recount  the  tribes  who  had 
come  up  to  their  duty,  who  had  shared  the  labor  and 
the  glory  of  the  fight.  And  then,  in  the  midst  of  the 
torrent  of  song  there  comes  this  other  strain  of  fiery 
indignation.  One  town  or  village,  Meroz,  had  hung 
back.  Hidden  away  in  some  safe  valley,  it  had  heard 
the  call  which  summoned  every  patriot,  but  it  knew  it 
was  in  no  danger.  It  had  felt  the  shock  of  battle  on 
the  otlier  side  of  the  hills,  and  nestled  and  hid  itself 
only  the  more  snugly.  "Curse  ye  Meroz,  saith  the 
angel  of  the  Lord;  cui-se  ye  bitterly  the  inhabitants 
thereof,  because  they  came  not  to  the  help  of  the  Lord, 
to  the  help  of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty."  It  is  a 
fierce  vindictive  strain.  It  bursts  from  the  lips  of  an 
exalted  furious  woman.  But  it  declares  one  of  the 
most  natural  indignations  of  the  human  heart. 


288  THE  CURSE  OF   MEROZ. 

Meroz  is  gone.  No  record  of  it  except  this  verse 
remains.  The  most  ingenious  and  indefatigable  ex- 
plorer  cannot  even  guess  where  it  once  stood.  But  the 
curse  remains ;  the  violent  outburst  of  the  contempt  and 
anger  which  men  feel  who  have  fought  and  suffered  and 
agonized,  and  then  see  other  men  who  have  the  same 
interest  in  the  result  which  they  have,  coming  out  cool 
and  unwounded  from  their  safe  hiding  places  to  take  a 
part  of  the  victory  which  they  have  done  nothing  to 
secure.  Meroz  stands  for  that.  It  sometimes  happens 
that  a  man  or  a  town  passes  completely  away  from  the 
face  of  the  earth  and  from  the  memory  of  men,  and 
only  leaves  a  name  which  stands  as  a  sort  of  symbol  or 
synonyme  of  some  quality,  some  virtue  or  some  vice,  for- 
ever. So  Meroz  stands  for  the  shirker ;  for  him  who  is 
willing  to  see  other  people  fight  the  battles  of  life,  while 
he  simply  comes  in  to  take  the  spoils.  No  wonder 
Deborah  and  Barak  were  indignant.  Their  wounds 
were  still  aching;  their  people  were  dead  and  dying 
all  around  them ;  and  here  was  Meroz,  idle  and  comfort- 
able, and  yet,  because  she  was  part  of  the  same  country, 
sure  to  get  the  benefit  of  the  great  victory  as  much  as 
any. 

It  was  not  only  personal  anger.  This  cowardly  and 
idle  town  had  not  come  "to  the  help  of  the  Lord." 
Deborah  knew  that  the  cause  of  Jehovah  had  been  in 
terrible  danger.  It  seemed  as  if  it  had  only  barely  been 
saved.  She  was  filled  with  horror  when  she  thought 
what  would  have  been  the  consequences  if  it  had  been 
lost.  And  here  sat  this  village,  whose  weight  perhaps 
might  have  furnished  just  what  was  needed  to  turn  the 
doubtful  scale ;  here  it  had  sat  through  all  the  critical 


THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ.  289 

and  dreadful  day,  looking  on  and  doing  nothing.  It 
was  all  her  passionate  sense  of  the  preciousness  of  God's 
government  and  the  danger  in  which  it  had  stood  which 
burst  from  her  lips  when  she  cursed  Meroz. 

There  are  many  people  always  who  are  in  the  com- 
munity and  in  the  world  what  Meroz  was  in  Palestine. 
For  there  is  an  everlasting  struggle  going  on  against 
wickedness  and  wretchedness.  It  never  ceases.  It 
changes  but  it  never  ceases.  It  shifts  from  one  place  to 
another.  It  dies  out  in  one  form  only  to  burst  out  in 
some  other  shape.  It  seems  to  flag  sometimes  as  if  the 
enemy  were  giving  way,  but  it  never  really  stops ;  the 
endless  struggle  of  all  that  is  good  in  the  world  against 
the  enemies  of  God,  against  sin  and  error  and  want  and 
woe.  And  the  strange  and  sad  thought  which  comes 
upon  our  minds  sometimes  is  of  how  few  people  after 
all  are  really  heartily  engaged  in  that  struggle,  how  few 
have  cast  themselves  into  it  with  all  their  hearts,  how 
many  there  are  who  stand  apart  and  wish  it  well  but 
never  expose  themselves  for  it  nor  do  anything  to 
help  it. 

Look  at  the  manifest  forms  in  which  men  show  their 
will  to  work  for  God  and  goodness.  Those  of  you  who 
have  had  any  occasion  to  observe  it  know  full  weU  by 
what  a  very  small  number  of  persons  the  charitable  and 
missionary  works  of  the  church  and  all  operations  which 
require  public  spirit  in  a  community  are  carried  on.  If 
there  is  a  reform  to  be  urged ;  if  there  is  an  abuse  to  be 
corrected  in  the  administration  of  affairs  ;  if  there  is 
some  oppressed  and  degraded  class  whose  rights,  which 
they  cannot  assert  themselves,  must  be  asserted  for 
them ;  if  there  is  a  palpable  wrong  done  every  day  upoa 

19 


290  THE   CURSE   OF  MEKOZ. 

our  streets,  —  most  of  you  know  how  very  few  are  the 
people  in  this  city,  who,  apart  from  any  private  interest 
in  the  matter,  are  looked  to  as  likely  to  take  any  con- 
cern for  the  public  good.  The  subscription  papers 
which  one  sees  passing  about  for  public  objects  might 
almost  as  well  be  stereotyped  as  written,  so  constantly 
do  they  repeat  the  same  limited  list  of  well  known 
names. 

These  are  superficial  signs.  But  ask  yourself  again, 
How  many  of  the  people  among  us  who  are  in  the  posi- 
tions of  influence  in  various  occupations,  feel  any  kind 
of  responsibility  for  the  elevation  of  their  occupation, 
feel  any  desire  of  making  it  a  stronghold  against  the 
power  of  evil  ?  How  many  merchants  feel  that  it  be- 
longs to  them  to  elevate  the  standards  of  trade  ?  How 
many  teachers  value  their  relation  to  the  young  because 
they  have  the  chance  to  strengthen  character  against 
temptation  ?  How  many  men  and  women  in  social  life 
care  to  develop  the  higher  uses  of  society,  making  it 
the  bulwark  and  the  educator  of  men's  purer,  finer, 
deeper  life  ?  Every  occupation  is  capable  of  this  pro- 
founder  treatment,  besides  its  mere  treatment  as  a 
means  of  livelihood  or  of  personal  advancement.  In 
every  occupation  there  are  some  men  who  conceive  of  it 
so.  How  few  they  are !  How  the  mass  of  men  who 
trade  and  teach  and  live  their  social  life,  never  get  be- 
yond the  merely  selfish  thought  about  it  all !  The  lack 
of  a  sense  of  responsibility,  the  selfishness  of  life,  is  the 
great  impression  that  is  forced  upon  us  constantly. 

It  is  so  even  in  religion.  To  how  many  Christians 
does  the  religious  life  present  itself  in  the  enthusiastic 
and  inspiring  aspect  of  working  and  fighting  for  God  ? 


THE  CURSE   OF   MEROZ.  291 

How  almost  all  Christians  never  get  beyond  the  first 
thought  of  saving  their  own  souls !  I  think  I  am  as 
ready  as  any  man  to  understand  the  vast  variety  of 
forms  under  which  self-devotion  may  be  shown,  and  not 
to  impute  selfishness  to  that  which  simply  is  not  unsel- 
fish in  certain  special  forms.  But,  making  all  broad 
allowances,  1  think  there  is  nothing  which  so  comes  to 
impress  a  man  as  the  way  in  which  the  vast  majority 
of  men  hold  back  and,  with  no  ill-will  but  all  good 
wishes,  let  the  interests  of  their  fellow-men  and  of  good- 
ness and  of  God  take  care  of  themselves.  I  should  like 
to  speak  to-day  of  the  curse  of  Meroz,  the  curse  of  use- 
lessness,  the  curse  of  shirking ;  and  I  should  rejoice  in- 
deed if  I  could  make  any  young  man  see  how  wretched 
it  is  and  inspire  him  with  some  noble  desire  to  do  some 
of  the  work,  to  fight  some  of  the  enemies  of  God. 

Notice  then  first  of  all  that  the  sin  for  which  Meroz 
is  cursed  is  pure  inaction.  There  is  no  sign  that  its 
people  gave  any  aid  or  comfort  to  the  enemy.  They 
merely  did  nothing.  We  hear  so  much  about  the  dan- 
ger of  wrong  thinking  and  the  danger  of  wrong  doing. 
There  is  the  other  danger,  of  not  doing  right  and  not 
thinking  right,  of  not  doing  and  not  thinking  at  all.  It 
is  hard  for  many  people  to  feel  that  there  is  danger  and 
harm  in  that,  the  worst  of  harm  and  danger.  And  the 
trouble  comes,  I  think,  from  the  low  condition  of  spirit- 
ual vitality,  from  the  lack  of  emphasis  and  vigor  in  the 
whole  conception  of  a  man's  own  life.  A  man  who  is 
but  half  alive,  a  poor  helpless  invalid  shut  up  in  his 
room,  hears  the  roar  of  human  life  going  on  past  his 
windows,  and  it  causes  him  no  self-reproach  that  he 
is  not  in  it,  that  he  has  no  part  or  share  in  all  this 


292  THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ. 

work.  He  does  not  expect  it  of  Inmself.  He  recog- 
nizes still  the  positive  sins.  He  knows  that  he  has 
no  right  to  commit  murder,  or  to  forge,  or  to  lie  as  he 
sits  there.  His  helplessness  has  not  released  him  from 
any  of  those  obligations.  But  he  does  feel  released 
from  enterprise  and  activity.  He  is  not  called  upon  to 
do  a  well  man's  work.  His  task  is  only  to  keep  himself 
alive.  Now  the  spiritual  and  moral  vitality  of  many 
men  is  low.  What  can  revive  it  ?  What  can  put 
strength  and  vigor  into  it  ?  There  is  a  verse  of  St.  John 
which,  among  many  other  things  which  it  tells,  tells  this, 
I  think.  "  He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life,"  John  says, 
"  and  he  that  hath  not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not  life." 
That  is  a  great  declaration.  It  says  that  if  a  man  takes 
Christ,  that  is  to  say  if  a  man  loves  and  serves  Christ 
because  Christ  has  redeemed  him  into  the  family  of 
God,  he  really  lives,  vigor  comes  into  him,  responsibility 
lays  hold  upon  him.  The  work  of  the  world  becomes 
his  work.  God's  tasks  become  his  tasks.  The  enemies  of 
God  become  his  enemies.  This  is  the  meaning  of  count- 
less passages  which  people  make  to  mean  so  much  shal- 
lower, so  much  smaller  things.  "  God  sent  His  only 
begotten  Son  into  the  world  that  we  might  live  through 
Him,"  John  says  again.  When  Christ  has  redeemed 
a  man,  and  the  man  knows  his  redemption  and  wants 
to  serve  Christ  in  gratitude,  then  the  invalidism  of  the 
soul  is  gone.  The  man  lives  all  through  and  through, 
and  wherever  Christ  needs  him  he  is  ready;  which 
merely  means  that  wherever  there  is  any  good  work  to 
be  done,  he  does  it. 

Now  there  are  in  all  our  cities,  and  this  city  has  its 
full  share  of  them,  a  great  multitude  of  useless  men. 


THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ.  293 

and  of  men  perfectly  contented  in  their  uselessness. 
Many  a  man  looks  back  upon  his  life,  and  save  for  the 
kindly  offices  which  he  has  rendered  to  his  immedi- 
ate associates,  he  cannot  remember  one  useful  thing  he 
ever  did.  He  never  stood  up  for  a  good  cause.  He 
never  remonstrated  against  an  evil.  He  never  helped 
a  bad  man  to  be  better.  A  merely  useless  man  !  His 
life  might  drop  out  of  the  host  to-morrow  and  none 
would  miss  a  soldier  from  the  ranks.  No  onset  or  de- 
fence would  be  the  weaker  for  his  going.  I  know  not 
how  he  reconciles  it  to  himself.  It  may  be  that  the 
palsy  of  a  fashionable  education  has  been  on  him  from 
his  birth.  Perhaps  he  grew  up,  as  you  perhaps  are 
bringing  up  your  children  now,  to  think  that  because 
his  life  was  plentifully  provided  against  necessity,  there- 
fore it  was  free  from  duty.  There  is  nothing  so  piti- 
able as  to  see  a  boy  in  some  self-indulgent  household, 
who  evidently  came  into  the  world  with  faculties  to 
make  him  be,  and  make  him  enjoy  being,  a  strong  and 
helpful  worker  for  God  and  man,  having  all  chance  and 
taste  for  using  these  faculties  quietly,  steadily  crushed 
out  of  him  by  the  constant  pressure  of  a  fashionable 
home.  It  is  the  child  of  God  being  slowly  made  into  ^ 
the  man  of  the  world.  But  however  it  came  about,  let 
us  take  the  only  too  familiar  phenomenon  of  the  use- 
less man  who  excuses  his  uselessness,  and  let  us  see 
what  are  some  of  the  various  forms  which  his  uselessness 
assumes.  I  shall  speak  of  three ;  cowardice,  and  false 
humility,  and  indolence.  Let  us  see  how  dead  they 
make  a  man  ;  and  how  the  Son  of  God  is  the  true  life 
of  all  of  them. 

1.  The  first  source  then  of  the  uselessness  of  good  men. 


294  THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ. 

or,  if  you  please,  of  men  who  are  not  bad,  is  moral 
cowardice.  Cowardice  we  call  the  most  contemptible 
of  vices.  It  is  the  one  whose  imputation  we  most  in- 
dignantly resent.  To  be  called  a  coward  would  make 
the  blood  boil  in  the  veins  of  any  of  us.  But  the  vice 
is  wonderfully  common.  Nay,  we  often  find  ourselves 
wondering  whether  it  is  not  universal,  whether  we  are 
not  all  cowards  somewhere  in  our  nature.  Physical 
cowardice  all  of  us  do  not  have.  Indeed  physical  cow- 
ardice is  rarer  than  we  think.  A  war  or  a  shipwreck 
always  brings  out  our  surprise  when  we  see  how  many 
men  there  are  that  can  march  up  to  a  battery,  or  stand 
and  watch  the  water  creep  up  the  side  of  their  ship  to 
drown  them,  and  never  quail.  But  moral  courage  is  an- 
other thing.  To  dare  to  do  just  what  we  know  we  ought 
to  do,  without  being  in  the  least  hindered  or  distorted 
by  the  presence  of  men  who  we  know  will  either  hate 
or  despise  or  ridicule  us  for  what  we  are  doing,  that  is 
rare  indeed.  Men  think  they  have  it  till  their  test 
comes.  Why,  there  is  in  this  community  ;  nay,  there  is 
in  this  congregation  to-day,  an  amount  of  right  conviction 
which,  if  it  were  set  free  into  right  action  by  complete 
release  from  moral  cowardice,  would  be  felt  through  the 
land.  A  man  is  deeply  assured  of  Christianity.  He  is 
trying  to  serve  Christ.  He  is  always  trying  to  be  spir- 
itual. If  he  can  creep  up  at  night  and  drive  a  spike 
into  some  cannon  of  infidelity  or  sin  when  no  one  sees 
him,  there  is  something  in  his  heart  that  makes  him  do 
it.  He  will  give  his  anonymous  dollar  or  thousand  dol- 
lars to  religious  work.  But  he  never  stands  out  boldly 
on  the  Lord's  side,  never  declares  himself  a  Christian 
and  says  that  the  work  of  his  Master  shall  be  the  work 


THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ.  295 

of  his  life.  Is  it  cowardice  ?  He  says  there  is  no  man 
he  is  afraid  of ;  and  there  is  none.  The  fear  is  concen- 
trated on  no  individual.  But  is  there  not  a  sense  of 
hostile  or  contemptuous  surroundings  that  lies  like  a 
chilling  hand  upon  what  ought  to  be  the  most  exuber- 
ant and  spontaneous  utterance  of  life?  Have  not  the 
long  years  of  living  in  such  an  atmosphere  enfeebled  the 
power  of  the  native  will  ?  One  sees  it  in  old  men  con- 
tinually, the  fear  which  keeps  the  best  and  most  enthu- 
siastic hopes  and  wishes  chained.  One  has  but  little 
expectation  of  the  breaking  of  that  chain  in  them.  But 
it  is  sad  to  see  those  same  chains  fastening  themselves 
on  younger  men.  The  mere  boy  feels  them  growing.  He 
wants  to  be  generous,  pure,  devoted,  Christian.  Every- 
thing urges  him  to  put  his  life  from  the  first  upon  the 
side  of  righteousness  and  Christ  And  what  hinders 
him  ?  He  early  learns  to  cloak  it  under  various  names, 
but  the  power  itself  is  fear.  Cowardice  wrings  the  foul 
or  profane  word  from  the  lips  that  hate  it  while  they 
utter  it.  Cowardice  stifles  the  manly  and  indignant  re- 
buke at  the  piece  of  conventional  and  approved  mean- 
ness of  the  college  or  the  shop.  Cowardice  keeps  the 
low  standards  of  honor  traditional  and  unbroken  through 
generations  of  boys.  Cowardice  holds  the  young  Chris- 
tian back  from  a  frank  acknowledgment  of  his  Lord. 

It  is  easy  to  make  an  argument  with  such  a  moral 
cowardice.  It  is  easy  for  the  boy  or  man  who  finds  that 
he  is  losing  his  best  life  out  of  fear  of  his  fellows  to 
reason  with  himself  "  Come,"  he  says  to  himself ;  "  I  am 
failing  of  my  duty,  I  am  dishonoring  my  best  convictions, 
I  am  living  a  lie ;  and  all  because  I  am  afraid  of  whom  ? 
Of  a  boy  or  a  man,  or  of  a  company  of  boys  or  men 


296  THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ. 

whom  I  cannot  respect.  I  know  that  he  whom  I  feai 
is  mean  and  low  in  his  judgments.  He  is  wicked,  and 
in  his  heart  there  is  no  doubt  the  misgiving  of  wicked- 
ness. He  probably  distrusts  and  only  half  believes  in 
his  own  abuse  or  his  own  sneer.  And  yet  I  am  afraid 
of  him.  And  what  am  I  afraid  that  he  will  do  ?  Why, 
either  that  he  will  detest  me  or  ridicule  me.  Suppose 
he  does.  "What  is  the  value  of  these  missiles  ?  Do  I 
really  care  for  his  praise  so  much  that  to  lose  it  would 
really  give  me  pain  ?  And  then  am  I  not  wrong  in 
thinking  that  he  cares  enough  about  me  to  waste  upon 
me  either  his  hate  or  his  contempt  ?  Do  I  not  over- 
estimate the  space  which  I  fill  in  his  thoughts  ?  Am  I 
not  doing  myself  wrong  in  order  that  a  man  or  a  world 
may  think  well  of  me,  which  in  reality  never  thinks  of 
me  at  all  ? "  This  is  the  argument  which  the  conscious 
coward  holds  with  himself.  It  is  unanswerable.  It  ought 
to  break  the  chains  instantly  and  set  the  coward  free.  A 
man  ought  to  cast  his  fears  to  the  winds  when  he  comes 
to  realize  that  he  is  fearing  contemptible  people,  and 
fearing  that  they  will  do  to  him  contemptible  things 
which  in  all  probability  they  will  never  care  enough 
about  him  to  do  at  all.  That  is  what  many  a  man  does 
realize  about  his  cowardice  ;  and  does  it  set  him  free  ? 
Almost  never,  I  believe.  Almost  never  is  a  man  made 
independent  and  brave  by  having  it  proved  to  him  that 
it  is  a  foolish  thing  to  be  afraid.  No,  men  do  not  escape 
from  their  cowardice  so.  Nothing  except  the  inflow  of 
a  larger  consecration  which  oversweeps  and  drowns  their 
cowardice  can  really  put  it  out  of  the  way  forever. 
Nothing  but  the  knowledge  of  God's  love,  taking  such 
possession  of  a  man  that  his  one  wish  and  thought  in 


THE   CURSE   OF  MEROZ.  297 

life  is  to  glorify  and  serve  God,  can  liberate  him  from, 
because  it  makes  him  totally  forget,  his  fear  of  man.  "  I 
will  walk  at  liberty  because  I  keep  Thy  commandments." 
0  those  great  words  of  David !  What  an  everlasting 
story  they  tell  of  the  liberty  that  comes  by  lofty  ser- 
vice. They  tell  of  what  you  young  people  need  to  save 
you,  at  the  very  outset  of  your  life,  from  cowardice. 
Not  by  despising  men  will  you  cease  to  fear  them. 
People's  worst  slavery  very  often  is  to  things  and  people 
that  they  despise.  Only  by  loving  God  and  fearing 
Him  with  that  fear  whose  heart  and  soul  is  love  ;  only 
by  letting  Christ  show  God  to  you  so  that  you  must  see 
Him ;  only  so  shall  you  tread  your  cowardice  under 
your  feet  and  be  free  for  your  best  life. 

2.  We  must  go  on  to  the  second  of  the  causes  of  the 
uselessness  of  men  who  might  be  useful,  which  I  called 
false  humility.  Humility  is  good  when  it  stimulates, 
it  is  bad  when  it  paralyzes,  the  active  powers  of  a  man. 
It  may  do  either.  We  have  noble  examples  of  humility 
as  a  stimulus ;  the  sense  of  weakness  making  a  man  all 
the  more  ardent  to  use  all  the  strength  he  has.  But  if 
conscious  weakness  causes  a  man  to  believe  that  it 
makes  no  difference  whether  he  works  or  not,  then  his 
humility  is  his  curse.  Perhaps  this  was  part  of  the 
trouble  of  Meroz.  The  little  village  in  the  hills,  poor, 
insignificant  perhaps,  lay  listening  to  the  gathering  of 
the  tribes.  She  saw  the  signal  fires  and  heard  the  sum- 
mons of  the  trumpet  run  through  all  the  land.  She 
knew  the  summons  was  for  her  as  well  as  all  the  rest. 
But  who  was  she  ?  What  could  she  do  ?  What  strength 
could  she  add  to  the  host  ?  ^Vhat  terror  could  she  in- 
spire in  the  foe  ?     What  would  Barak  care  for  her  sup- 


298  THE  CUESE   OF  MEROZ. 

port,  or  Sisera  for  her  hostility  ?  So  she  ky  still  and 
let  the  battle  fight  itself  through  without  her.  Do  you 
not  recognize  the  picture  ?  Whenever  men  hide  behind 
their  conscious  feebleness ;  whenever,  because  they  can 
do  so  little,  they  content  themselves  with  doing  nothing  ; 
whenever  the  one-talented  men  stand  with  their  napkins 
in  their  hands  along  the  roadside  of  life,  —  there  is 
Meroz  over  again.  Once  more  the  argument  is  clear 
enough ;  as  clear  with  humility  as  it  is  with  cowardice. 
Listen,  how  clear  it  is  !  You  who  say  that  you  can 
do  so  little  for  any  good  cause  that  there  is  no  use  of 
your  doing  anything ;  you  can  give  so  little  that  it  is  not 
worth  while  for  you  to  give  anything ;  your  word  has 
so  little  weight  that  it  need  not  be  spoken  for  the  Lord, 
—  consider  these  things.  First,  what  do  you  know  about 
the  uses  of  the  Lord,  of  this  great  work  which  the  Lord 
has  to  do  ;  what  do  you  know  of  it  that  gives  you  the 
right  to  say  that  your  power  is  little  ?  God  may  have 
some  most  critical  use  to  put  you  to  as  soon  as  you  de- 
clare yourself  His  servant.  Men  judge  by  the  size  of 
things  ;  God  judges  by  their  fitness.  Two  pieces  of  iron 
lie  together  on  a  shelf  One  is  a  great  clumsy  plough- 
share ;  and  the  other  is  a  delicate  screw  that  is  made  to 
hold  the  finest  joint  of  some  subtle  machinery  in  place. 
An  ignorant  boor  comes  up  and  takes  the  great  piece 
and  treasures  it.  The  little  piece  he  sees  is  little,  and 
throws  it  away.  Fitness  is  more  than  size.  You  can  see 
something  of  your  size  ;  but  you  can  see  almost  nothing 
of  your  fitness  until  you  understand  all  the  wonderful 
manifold  work  that  God  has  to  do.  It  is  a  most  wanton 
presumption  and  pride  for  any  man  to  dare  to  be  sure 
that  there  is  not  some  very  important  and  critical  place 


THE   CURSE  OF   MEROZ.  299 

which  just  he  and  no  one  else  is  made  to  fill.  It  is  al- 
most as  presumptuous  to  think  you  can  do  nothing  as  to 
think  you  can  do  everything.  The  latter  folly  supposes 
that  God  exhausted  Himself  when  He  made  you  ;  but 
the  former  supposes  that  God  made  a  hopeless  blunder 
when  He  made  you,  which  it  is  quite  as  impious  for  you 
to  think. 

And  remember,  in  the  second  place,  what  would  happei? 
if  all  the  little  people  in  the  world  held  up  their  littleness 
like  a  shield  before  them  as  you  hold  up  yours.  Grant 
that  you  are  as  small  as  you  think  you  are,  you  are  the 
average  size  of  moral  and  intellectual  humanity.  Let 
all  the  Merozes  in  the  land  be  humble  like  you,  and 
where  shall  be  the  army  ?  Only  when  men  like  you 
wake  up  and  shake  the  paralysis  of  their  humility  away, 
shall  we  begin  to  see  the  dawn  of  that  glorious  millen- 
ium  for  which  we  sigh ;  which  will  consist  not  in  the 
transformation  of  men  into  angels,  nor  in  the  coming 
forth  of  a  few  colossal  men  to  be  the  patterns  and  the 
champions  of  life,  but  simply  in  each  man,  through  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  great  world,  doing  his  best. 

Remember,  too,  that  such  a  humility  as  yours,  the 
humility  that  enfeebles  and  disarms  you,  comes,  if  you 
get  at  its  root,  from  an  over-thought  about  yourself,  an 
over-sense  of  your  own  personality,  and  so  is  close  akin 
to  pride.  It  has  run  all  around  the  circle  in  its  desire 
to  escape  from  pride,  and  has  almost  got  back  to  pride 
again.  Now  pride  is  the  thickest  and  most  blinding 
medium  through  which  the  human  eye  can  look  at  any- 
thing. If  your  humility  is  not  transparent  but  muddy, 
so  that  you  see  things  not  more  clearly  but  less  clearly 
because  of  it,  you  may  be  sure  there  is  pride  in  it.     O 


300  THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ. 

my  friends,  there  is  a  humility  which  some  men  are  too 
humble  to  feel,  a  distrust  of  self  which  some  men  are 
too  forgetful  of  self  ever  to  experience. 

The  argument,  then,  against  allowing  any  sense  of 
weakness  to  keep  us  from  doing  all  that  we  can  do,  is 
perfectly  conclusive.  But,  once  again,  does  this  argu- 
ment dispel  the  paralysis  and  set  men  free  to  work  ? 
Almost  never,  I  believe,  again.  Not  by  studying  him- 
self, but  by  forgetting  himself  in  the  desire  to  serve 
his  Lord,  does  a  man  exchange  the  false  humility  which 
crushes  for  the  true  humility  which  inspires.  What  has 
become  of  the  self-distrust  and  shyness  of  that  gentle 
scholar  who  has  turned  into  a  Boanerges  of  the  truth  ; 
or  of  that  timid  shrinking  woman  who  goes  unmoved 
through  the  hooting  of  a  rabble  to  the  stake  ?  Both 
have  lost  themselves  in  their  Lord.  Both  have  learned 
the  love  of  Christ  till  that  became  the  one  fact  of  their 
existence ;  and  then  the  call  of  Him  who  loved  them 
has  drawn  the  soul  out  of  all  self-consciousness.  They 
have  forgotten  themselves,  forgotten  even  their  humility, 
and  are  wholly  His.  And  there  is  the  door  through 
which  all  morbid  self-distrust,  all  the  despair  of  con- 
scious weakness,  must  find  escape. 

3.  I  shall  not  need  to  say  much  upon  the  third  of  the 
causes  for  men's  shirking  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  life.  Not  that  it  is  not  important,  but  that  it  is  so 
simple.  It  is  mere  indolence,  mere  laziness.  Perhaps 
Meroz  was  not  afraid.  Perhaps  she  was  not  shy  and 
self-distrustful.  Perhaps  she  simply  believed  that  the 
work  of  God  would  somehow  get  itself  done  without 
her,  and  so  waited  and  waited  and  came  not  to  the 
help   of   the   Lord   against   the   mighty.     Ah,  we   are 


THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ.  301 

always  giving  elaborate  and  complicated  accounts  both 
of  the  virtues  and  the  vices  of  our  fellow-men  which  are 
really  as  simple  and  explicable  as  possible,  as  clear  as  day- 
light. A  man  does  a  good  thing  and  we  are  not  con- 
tent to  say  that  he  does  it  because  he  is  a  good  man,  but 
we  must  find  strange  obscure  motives  for  it,  some  far-oS 
policies  and  plans,  some  base  root  for  this  bright  flower. 
Another  man  lets  his  duty,  his  clear  duty,  go  undone, 
and  again  we  set  our  ingenuity  to  work  to  guess  why  he 
does  not  do  it.  He  misconceives  his  duty,  he  is  too  modest, 
he  is  waiting  for  something ;  when  the  real  trouble  is  in 
a  simple  gross  laziness,  a  mere  self-indulgent  indolence, 
which  makes  him  indifferent  to  duty  altogether.  Let 
me  go  back  to  the  picture  which  I  tried  to  draw  at  the 
beginning  of  this  sermon ;  a  man  who  was  born  in  lux- 
ury has  lived  in  luxury,  and  now  is  coming  on  to  middle 
life  with  the  habits  of  his  youth  about  him.  He  belongs 
to  that  strange,  undefined,  and  yet  distinct  condition  of 
life  which  is  called  society  or  fashion  or  respectability. 
That  is  a  strange  condition.  It  is  not  characterized  by 
remarkable  intelligence,  not  by  peculiar  education,  not 
always  by  the  most  perfect  breeding ;  but  the  main  thing 
about  it  is  that  over  it  there  hovers  a  vague  air  of  privi- 
lege. The  men  and  women  who  live  in  it  are  not  looked 
to  by  other  people,  and  do  not  look  to  themselves,  for 
the  active  energetic  contributions  to  the  labor  of  life. 
It  does  not  furnish  the  workers  to  the  state  or  to  the 
church.  With  this  condition  many  of  you  are  perfectly 
familiar.  To  it  many  of  you  belong,  and  feel  its  influ- 
ence. Nothing  is  expected  of  you,  and  you  do  nothing. 
A  weU-bred,  good-natured  selfishness  fills  up  the  life  of 
such  a  man.     Duty  ?     It  seems  as  if  he  never  had  heard 


302  THE   CURSE  OF  MEROZ. 

the  word  ;  or  as  if  he  thought  that  it  belonged,  like  those 
other  two  words,  poverty  and  work,  to  beings  of  another 
order  from  himself.  Now  is  there  any  hope  for  such  a 
man  ?  O,  if  he  were  only  a  fancy  sketch  !  O,  if  he  were 
not  real  and  actual  all  through  the  city  !  0,  if  there  were 
not  whole  hosts  of  boys,  with  the  capacity  in  them  to  be 
something  better,  who  are  growing  up  with  him  as  the  ob- 
ject of  their  admiration,  and  becoming  year  by  year  more 
and  more  like  him !  Is  there  any  hope  of  such  a  man 
coming  to  understand  that  it  is  not  for  such  a  life  as  he  is 
living  that  God  has  made  him  ?  I  own  the  only  chance  I 
see  is  in  his  coming  to  understand,  in  some  real  sense  and 
meaning  of  those  words,  that  God  did  make  him.  I  think 
that  is  the  real  knowledge  that  is  needed  in  our  parlors 
and  our  clubs ;  needed  there,  lacking  there,  often  quite 
as  much  as  in  our  drinking  saloons  and  dens  of  thieves. 
That  a  man's  life  is  not  an  accident,  that  we  are  here 
because  God  put  us  here  as  the  master  mechanic  puts 
each  bolt  and  shaft  of  the  engine  into  the  place  where 
it  is  wanted  ;  is  not  that  the  quickening,  the  transform- 
ing knowledge?  That  physical  strength,  those  strong 
arms  and  nimble  hands,  are  not  accidents  ;  not  an  acci- 
dent, that  quick  perception  and  that  power  of  endurance ; 
not  an  accident,  that  easy  temper  and  careless  acceptance 
of  the  things  of  life  which  might  be  elevated  into  faith. 
Let  a  man  know  this,  and  his  sense  of  fitness  must  be 
outraged  every  day  as  he  hears  the  life,  which  he  was 
made  for,  claiming  him,  and  yet  goes  on  in  uselessness. 
But  there  is  only  one  way  to  really  know  this  deeply. 
The  only  way  to  really  know  that  God  made  us  is  to 
let  God  remake,  regenerate  us.  The  only  way  to  be 
sure  that  God  gave  us  our  physical  life  is  to  let  Him 


THE   CURSE   OF  MEROZ.  303 

give  US  the  spiritual  life  which  shall  declare  for  the 
physical  life  an  adequate  and  worthy  purpose.  The  only 
way  to  realize  that  we  are  God's  children  is  to  let  Christ 
lead  us  to  our  Father.  That  is  the  only  permanent  es- 
cape from  indolence,  from  self-indulgence  ;  the  grateful 
and  obedient  dedication  to  God  through  Christ  which 
makes  all  good  work,  all  self-sacrifice,  a  privilege  and 
joy  instead  of  a  hardship,  since  it  is  done  for  Him. 

The  curse  of  Meroz  is  the  curse  of  uselessness ;  and 
these  are  the  sources  out  of  which  it  comes  —  cowardice 
and  false  humility  and  indolence.  They  are  the  stones 
piled  upon  the  sepulchres  of  vigor  and  energy  and  work 
for  God,  whose  crushing  weight  cannot  be  computed. 
Who  shall  roll  us  away  those  stones  ?  Nothing  can  do 
it  but  the  power  of  Christ.  The  manhood  that  is  touched 
by  Him  rises  into  life.  I  have  tried  to  show  you  what 
that  means.  O  my  friends,  it  means  this,  that  when  a 
man  has  understood  the  life  and  cross  of  Jesus,  and  really 
knows  that  he  is  redeemed  and  saved,  his  soul  leaps  up 
in  love  and  wants  to  serve  its  Savior ;  and  then  he  is 
afraid  of  nobody ;  and  however  little  his  own  strength 
is,  he  wants  to  give  it  all ;  and  the  cords  of  his  self-indul- 
gence snap  like  cobwebs.  Then  he  enters  the  new  life  of 
usefulness.  And  what  a  change  it  is  !  To  be  working 
with  God,  however  humbly  ;  to  have  part  of  that  service 
which  suns  and  stars,  which  angels  and  archangels, 
which  strong  and  patient  and  holy  men  and  women  in 
all  times  have  done ;  to  be,  in  some  small  corner  of  the 
field,  stout  and  brave  .  and  at  last  triumphant  in  our 
fight  with  lust  and  cruelty  and  falsehood,  with  want  or 
woe  or  ignorance,  with  unbelief  and  scorn,  with  any  of 


304  THE   CURSE   OF   MEROZ. 

the  enemies  of  God;  to  be  distinctly  on  God's  side, 
though  the  weight  of  the  work  we  do  may  be  utterly 
inappreciable,  —  what  a  change  it  is  when  a  poor, 
selfish,  cowardly,  fastidious,  idle  human  creature  comes 
to  this !  Blessed  is  he  that  cometh  to  the  help  of  the 
Lord,  to  the  help  of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty.  There 
is  no  curse  for  him.  No  wounds  that  he  can  receive 
while  he  is  fighting  on  that  side  can  harm  him.  To 
fight  there  is  itself  to  conquer,  even  though  the  victory 
comes  through  pain  and  death,  as  it  came  to  Him  under 
whom  we  fight,  the  Captain  of  our  Salvation,  Jesus 
Christ. 


XVIII. 
THE  MYSTERY  OF    LIGHT. 

A    SERMON    FOR    TRINITY    SUNDAY. 
^'Who  coverest  Thyself  with  light  as  with  a  garment." —  PsALM  civ.  2. 

The  Psalms  of  David  have  two  different  descriptions 
of  the  way  in  which  God  offers  Himself  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  man.  They  are  both  figurative.  Each  of  them 
is  drawn  from  one  of  the  two  gi-eat  aspects  in  which  the 
world  of  nature  stands  before  men's  eyes.  They  seem 
at  first  to  be  quite  contradictory  of  one  another.  But, 
as  so  often  is  the  case,  the  more  we  think  of  them  the 
more  we  see  that  both  are  true,  and  going  back  to  their 
meeting-point  we  find,  lying  there,  the  deepest  and  the 
fullest  truth  concerning  God.  In  the'eighteenth  Psalm 
David  sings  of  God,  "  He  made  darkness  His  secret 
place ;  His  pavilion  round  about  Him  were  dark  water 
and  thick  clouds  of  the  skies."  And  again  in  the  nine- 
ty-seventh Psalm,  "  Clouds  and  darkness  are  round 
about  Him."  And  then  in  this  verse  of  the  one  hun- 
dred and  fourth  Psalm,  which  I  have  quoted  for  my 
text,  "  Who  coverest  Thyself  with  light  as  with  a  gar- 
ment." Darkness  and  light !  The  two  opposites  which 
divide  the  world !  The  two  foes  which  are  in  perpetual 
fight  throughout  all  nature !  Behold  they  both  are 
made  the  mediums  of  the  utterance  of  God.    "  Darknesis 


306  THE  MYSTERY   OF  LIGHT.  ^ 

is  round  about  Him  ; "  and  yet  He  stands  before  the 
world,  "  clothed  with  light  as  with  a  garment." 

When  we  try  to  reach  the  ideas  which  are  included 
in  these  two  pictures,  so  as  to  see  whether  we  can  hold 
them  both  in  our  minds  at  once,  the  first  thing  of  which 
we  wish  to  be  sure  is  that  the  difference  between  them 
is  the  difference  not  between  mystery  and  no  mystery, 
but  between  two  kinds  of  mystery.  It  is  not  that  the 
figure  of  the  darkness  presents  to  us  a  Being  all  obscure 
and  hidden,  whom  no  intelligence  can  understand,  and 
then  the  figure  of  the  light  throws  open  all  the  closed 
doors  of  this  Being's  nature  so  that  whoever  will  may 
enter  in  and  understand  Him  through  and  through. 
God  is  forever  mysterious  to  man.  The  infinite  is  for- 
ever infinitely  past  the  comprehension  of  the  finite. 
None  but  another  God,  the  equal  of  Himself,  could 
fathom  what  God  is.  He  not  merely  does  not.  He  can- 
not, make  to  us  a  revelation  of  Himself  which  shall 
uncover  all  the  secrets  of  His  life  and  leave  us  nothing 
for  our  wonder,  nothing  to  elude  us  or  bewilder  us. 
What  then  ?  What  is  it  that  He  does  do  when  He 
changes  the  figure  of  His  presentation  and,  instead  of 
standing  before  our  awe-filled  vision  wrapped  in  the 
robes  of  darkness,  stands  forth  radiant,  "  clothed  with 
the  light  as  with  a  garment  ? "  This  is  one  of  the 
questions  which  lie  at  the  root  of  any  true  understand- 
ing of  revelation ;  one  of  the  questions  men's  confusion 
with  regard  to  which  keeps  their  whole  idea  of  revela- 
tion misty  and  confused  ;  one  of  the  questions  therefore 
which  we  want  to  answer  as  carefully  and  truly  as  we 
can. 

The  answer  to  the  question  lies  in  the  fact  that  there 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   LIGHT.  307 

are  two  kinds  of  mystery,  a  mystery  of  darkness  and  a 
mystery  of  light.  With  the  mystery  of  darkness  we  are 
familiar.  Of  the  mystery  of  light  we  have  not  thought, 
perhaps,  so  much.  Some  object  which  we  would  like 
to  study  is  hidden  in  obscurity.  We  cannot  make  out 
its  shape  or  color.  We  strain  our  eyes,  but  it  eludes 
us  still.  We  know  that  the  way  it  looks  to  us  may  be 
quite  different  from  the  reality.  We  know  that  the 
cloud  is  jealously  hiding  some  of  its  features  without 
the  knowledge  of  which  no  man  can  truly  say  that  he 
knows  the  object.  We  struggle  with  our  ever  baffled 
vision,  saying  all  the  time,  "  How  mysterious  ! "  "  What 
a  mystery  it  is  ! "  But  now  supposing  that  the  object 
of  our  scrutiny,  being  something  really  rich  and  pro- 
found, were  brought  out  of  the  darkness  into  a  sudden 
flood  of  sunlight,  would  it  grow  less  or  more  mysterious  ? 
Suppose  it  is  a  jewel,  and  instead  of  having  to  strain 
your  eyes  to  make  out  the  outline  of  its  shape,  you  can 
look  now  deep  into  its  heart ;  see  depth  opening  beyond 
depth,  until  it  looks  as  if  there  were  no  end  to  the 
chambers  of  splendor  that  are  shut  up  in  that  little 
stone ;  see  flake  after  flake  of  luminous  color  floating  up 
out  of  the  unseen  fountain  which  lies  somewhere  in  the 
jewel's  heart.  Is  the  jewel  less  or  more  mysterious 
than  it  was  when  your  sight  had  to  struggle  to  see 
whether  it  was  a  topaz  or  an  emerald  ?  Suppose  it  is 
a  landscape.  One  hour  all  its  features  are  vague  and 
dim  in  twilight ;  hill,  field,  and  stream  in  almost  indis- 
tinguishable confusion.  Six  hours  later  the  whole  is 
glowing  in  the  noonday  sun,  the  streams  burning  with 
silvery  light,  the  colors  of  the  fresh  spring  hillsides 
striking  from  far  away  upon  the  senses,  filling  them  with 


308  THE   MYSTERY   OF  LIGHT. 

delight  and  wonder.  Everything  is  thrilling  and  burst- 
ing with  manifest  life.  Has  not  the  mystery  increased 
with  the  ascending  sun  ?  Suppose  it  is  a  friend.  A  man 
about  whom  you  have  heard  conflicting  and  bewildering 
accounts,  whom  you  have  been  unable  to  make  out  as 
he  stood  off  at  a  distance,  has  drawn  near  and  touched 
your  life.  You  have  grown  intimate  with  him.  You 
have  traced  his  ideas  and  actions  back  into  his  charac- 
ter. You  have  seen  him  on  many  sides,  and  out  of 
many  impressions  the  roundness  and  completeness  of 
his  nature  has  become  clear  to  you.  Is  it  not  true  that 
the  more  you  see  of  him  the  more  you  wonder  at  him  ? 
If  you  are  worthy  to  see  him  and  he  is  worthy  to  be 
seen,  familiarity  breeds  not  contempt  but  reverence. 
The  more  light  there  is  upon  the  greatest  and  best  men, 
the  more  mystery  they  show  to  their  wondering  fellows. 
There  is  no  mystery  of  character  to  any  man  like  that 
of  his  father  and  his  mother,  whom  he  has  known  all 
his  life  in  the  constant  clear  light  of  home.  And  so  we 
might  proceed  with  many  illustrations.  Is  a  great  idea, 
a  great  study,  a  great  cause,  more  deeply  mysterious  to 
the  superficial  or  to  the  thorough  student  ?  Was  not 
the  mystery  of  mathematical  truth  more  truly  mysteri- 
ous to  Professor  Peirce  than  it  is  to  you  or  me  ?  Does 
not  the  mystery  of  color  or  the  mystery  of  form  grow 
more  intense  to  Eaphael  and  Michael  Angelo  as  they 
surpass  the  mere  gazer  of  the  galleries  ?  Africa  looks 
mysterious  to  the  mere  tourist  who  sails  into  the  harbor 
at  Alexandria.  Has  it  lost  or  deepened  its  mystery  for 
Livingstone  and  Stanley  when  they  have  toiled  up  the 
long  nameless  rivers  into  the  heart  of  the  dark  con- 
tinent ? 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  LIGHT.  309 

This  is  the  mystery  of  light  With  all  deep  things  the 
deeper  light  brings  new  mysteriousness.  The  mystery  of 
light  is  the  privilege  and  prerogative  of  the  profoundest 
things.  The  shallow  tilings  are  capable  only  of  the  mys- 
tery of  darkness.  Of  that  all  things  are  capable.  Noth- 
ing is  so  thin,  so  light,  so  small,  that  if  you  cover  it  with 
clouds  and  hide  it  in  half-lights  it  will  not  seem  mysteri- 
ous. But  the  most  genuine  and  profound  things  you  may 
bring  forth  into  the  fullest  light,  and  let  the  sunshine 
bathe  them  through  and  through,  and  in  them  there  will 
open  ever  new  wonders  of  mysteriousness.  The  mys- 
tery of  light  belongs  to  them.  And  how  then  must  it 
be  with  God,  the  Being  of  all  beings,  the  Being  who  is 
Himself  essential  Being,  out  of  whom  all  other  beings 
spring  and  from  whom  they  are  continually  fed  ?  Surely 
in  Him  the  law  which  we  have  been  tracing  must  find 
its  consummation.  Surely  of  Him  it  must  be  supremely 
true  that  the  more  we  know  of  Him,  the  more  He  shows 
Himself  to  us,  the  more  mysterious  He  must  forever  be. 
The  mystery  of  light  must  be  complete  in  Him. 

Shall  the  time  ever  come  when  God  shall  be  so  per- 
fectly understood  by  man  that  the  mystery  shall  be  gone 
out  of  His  life,  and  man  feel  that  he  knows  Him  through 
and  through  and  can  tell  his  brother-man  about  Him ; 
as  the  father  stands  by  the  steam-engine  and  explains  it 
to  his  boy,  so  that  what  used  to  be  a  beautiful  wonder- 
ful thing  which  seemed  almost  alive,  becomes  only  an 
ingenious  arrangement  of  steel  and  iron,  which  the  boy 
goes  off  to  imitate  in  his  workshop,  making  a  little  steam- 
engine  which  repeats  the  big  one  which  he  has  been 
studying  ?  Shall  the  time  ever  come  when  man  shall  un- 
derstand God  like  that  ?     Men  often  talk  as  if  such  a 


310  THE   MYSTERY   OF   LIGHT. 

time  would  come.  Nay,  men  often  talk  as  if  such  a 
time  had  come ;  as  if  their  theologies,  their  descrip- 
tions of  God,  had  ehminated  mystery  from  Deity  and 
made  the  infinite  perfectly  intelligible  to  the  finite. 
This  is  the  danger  which  haunts  the  popular  theology 
and  often  makes  the  devotional  meeting  and  the  relig- 
ious controversy  and  the  revival  hymn  and  the  state- 
ment of  religious  experience  very  unpleasant  and  some- 
times very  harmful.  Very  many  good  people  seem  to 
think  that  in  order  to  make  God  seem  dear  and  capable 
of  being  loved  and  trusted  by  His  children,  they  must 
make  Him  seem  perfectly  simple  and  comprehensible ; 
they  must  take  away  from  the  thought  of  Him  aU  that 
is  awful  and  mysterious  ;  as  if  awe  and  mystery  were 
not  essential  elements  in  the  highest  loveliness  ;  as  if 
our  deepest  and  most  trustful  love  were  not  always 
given  to  the  things  which  are  awful  and  mysterious  to 
us ;  the  love  of  the  little  child  for  his  father  who  em- 
bodies for  him  omniscience  and  omnipotence  ;  the  love 
of  the  patriot  for  his  country  ;  of  the  philanthropist  for 
his  race  ;  of  the  poet  for  nature.  There  was  a  time 
when  men  seemed  to  be  so  busy  in  wondering  at  God 
that  they  forgot  to  love  Him.  Sometimes  now  it  seems 
as  if  they  so  longed  to  love  Him  that  they  dared  not  re- 
member how  wonderful  He  is.  When  the  full  religion 
shall  have  come,  men  will  know  that  the  more  wonder- 
ful they  find  Him  to  be,  the  more  completely  they  may 
love  Him  ;  and  the  more  He  gives  Himself  to  their  love, 
the  more  He  will  be  wonderful  to  them  forever. 

For  to  those  who  stand  nearest  to  Him  He  is  most 
mysterious.  "We  talk  with  ready  understanding  of  the 
death  of  Christ,  before  which  the  angels  stand  in  awe. 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  LIGHT.  311 

"  No  angel  in  the  sky 
Can  fully  bear  that  sight, 
But  downward  bends  his  wondering  eye 
At  mysteries  so  bright." 

Mysteries  so  bright !  The  more  bright  the  more  mys- 
terious !  Heaven  is  to  be  full  of  mystery.  The  nearer 
we  stand  to  the  Lamb  upon  His  throne,  the  deeper  depths 
we  can  discover  in  His  majesty  and  love,  the  more  won- 
derful shall  He  be  to  us  forever.  Eevelation  —  it  is  a 
most  important  thing  to  know  —  revelation  is  not  the 
unveiling  of  God,  but  a  changing  of  the  veil  that  covers 
Him  ;  not  the  dissipation  of  mystery,  but  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  mystery  of  darkness  into  the  mystery  of  light. 
To  the  Pagan,  God  is  mysterious  because  He  is  hidden 
in  clouds,  mysterious  like  the  storm.  To  the  Christian, 
God  is  mysterious  because  He  is  radiant  with  infinite 
truth,  mysterious  like  the  sun. 

I  have  dwelt  long  on  this  because  I  wanted  to  make 
it  as  clear  as  I  could,  and  because  it  seems  to  me  to  be 
what  we  want  first  and  most  of  all  to  remember  when 
we  are  thinking  of  the  New  Testament  revelation  of 
God,  which  we  call  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  To  us 
to  whom  that  revelation  seems  to  be  clear,  God  stands 
forth  in  it  with  amazing  light.  Behold  He  who  hid 
Himself  in  darkness  has  come  forth  into  the  region 
which  our  most  dear  affections  and  our  loftiest  thoughts 
keep  forever  flooded  with  brightness.  He  is  our  Father, 
our  Brother,  our  Inspiring  Friend.  Father,  Brother, 
Friend !  These  are  words  of  light.  In  the  clear  at- 
mosphere of  the  relations  which  those  words  represent 
our  life  is  lived,  our  most  familiar  interests  and  hopes 
and  occupations  go  their  way,  walk  up  and  down,  and  do 


312  THE   MYSTERY   OF  LIGHT. 

their  several  business.  When  God  then  sheds  around 
Himself  the  revelation  of  these  three  relationships,  and 
declares  Himself  to  be  Father  and  Son  and  Spirit,  it  is 
surely  a  vast  access  of  light.  We  know  Him  as  we 
have  not  known  Him  before,  while  our  whole  knowl- 
edge of  Him  was  wrapped  up  in  the  undefined,  unopened 
majesty  of  that  one  name,  God.  And  what  then  ?  In 
the  new  light  of  this  great  revelation  has  the  mystery 
of  God  grown  less  or  greater  ?  Surely  not  less  but 
greater.  Nothing  could  be  more  misleading  than  for 
the  believer  or  for  the  doubter  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  to  talk  about  that  doctrine  as  if  it  claimed  to  be 
the  solution,  the  dissipation,  of  the  mystery  of  God.  I 
say  "  God "  to  the  religious  heathen  who  has  gone  so 
far  as  to  believe  that  there  is  one  God  and  not  many 
gods  in  the  universe ;  I  say  "  God "  to  him  and  he 
gazes  into  the  darkness  of  that  great  idea  and  says,  "  I 
do  not  know  what  God  is ;  I  do  not  dare  to  ask.  A 
million  questions  come  buffeting  me  like  bats  out  of  the 
darkness  the  moment  that  I  dare  even  to  turn  my  face 
that  way.  Let  me  hear  His  commandments  and  go  and 
do  thenoL  For  Himself  I  dare  not  even  ask  what  He 
is."  That  is  the  mystery  of  darkness.  That  is  Moses 
on  Mount  Sinai.  That  is  the  Egyptian  in  the  desert. 
That  is  the  pure  worshipper  of  the  one  unknown  god- 
hood  everywhere.  Then  I  say  "  God  "  to  the  Christian 
and  he  looks  up  and  says,  "  Yes,  I  know  ;  Father,  Son, 
and  Spirit ;  my  Father,  my  Brother,  my  inspiring  Friend. 
I  know  Him,  what  He  is,  for  He  has  shown  Himself  to 
me."  But  with  each  word.  Father,  Brother,  Friend, 
there  come  flocking  new  questions,  not  like  bats  out  of 
the  darkness,  but  like  sunbeams  out  of  the  light,  bewil- 


THE  MYSTERY   OF   LIGHT.  313 

dering  the  believing  soul  with  guesses  and  insoluble 
suggestions  and  intangible  visions  of  the  love,  the  truth, 
the  glory  of  God,  which  were  impossible  until  this 
clothing  by  God  of  Himself  with  radiance  in  Christ  had 
come.  That  is  the  mystery  of  light.  That  is  St.  John 
in  Patmos.  That  is  the  Christian  saint  and  thinker  and 
questioner  of  all  the  ages  standing  before  "  the  light  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus 
Christ" 

I  am  anxious  to  assert  that  the  revelation  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ  is  not  the  dissipation  but  the  change,  the 
transfiguration  of  mystery.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
is  not  an  easy,  ready-made,  satisfactory  explanation 
of  God,  in  which  the  inmost  chambers  of  His  life  are 
unlocked  and  thrown  wide  open  that  whoso  will  may 
walk  there  and  understand  Him  through  and  through. 
Often  men's  disappointment  comes  just  here.  The  be- 
liever in  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  says,  "  I  thought 
that  with  my  acceptance  of  this  truth  all  doubt,  all 
questioning  would  be  over.  But  lo !  the  questions  which 
I  knew  before  were  nothing  to  the  questions  that  come 
flocking  around  me  now.  My  heart  is  full  of  wonder. 
Christ,  who  reveals  God  to  me,  seems  to  escape  me  and 
elude  me.  The  mystery  of  my  religion  is  increased  a 
hundredfold  since  God  shone  on  me  in  the  light  of  the 
gospel  revelation."  It  is  often  an  anxious  and  discour- 
aging discovery.  There  is  a  strange  confused  conscious- 
ness that  all  is  right,  and  yet  a  haunting  suspicion  that 
something  is  wrong,  when  the  humble,  puzzled  believer 
thus  declares  the  perplexity  of  his  faith.  And  on  the 
other  hand  the  doubter  and  denier  of  the  Trinity  de- 
clares, "  See  how  simple  my  pure  doctrine  is,  and  how 


314  THE   MYSTERY   OF   LIGHT. 

complicated  and  hard  to  understand  your  teaching 
makes  the  nature  and  life  of  God.  It  has  lost  sim- 
plicity and  clearness."  There  is  no  answer  to  either  of 
them,  my  friends,  save  the  one  great  sufficient  answer 
which  lies  in  the  truth  of  the  mystery  of  light.  There 
is  a  mystery  concerning  God  to  him  who  sees  the  rich- 
ness of  the  Divine  life  in  the  threefold  unity  of  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  which  no  man  feels  to  whom  God 
does  not  seem  to  stand  forth  from  the  pages  of  his  Tes- 
tament in  that  completeness.  Not  as  the  answer  to  a 
riddle,  which  leaves  all  things  clear,  but  as  the  deeper 
sight  of  God,  prolific  with  a  thousand  novel  questions 
which  were  never  known  before,  clothed  in  a  wonder 
which  only  in  that  larger  light  displayed  itself,  offering 
new  worlds  for  faith  and  reverence  to  wander  in,  —  so 
must  the  New  Testament  revelation,  the  truth  of  Father, 
Son,  and  Spirit,  one  perfect  God,  offer  itself  to  man. 

The  figure  of  our  Psalmist's  verse  seems  to  me  to  be 
full  of  beauty  and  significance  in  connection  with  what 
I  am  now  saying.  "  Thou  coverest  Thyself  with  light 
as  with  a  garment,"  he  cries  to  God.  The  garment  at 
once  hides  and  reveals  the  form  it  clotlies.  The  man 
among  men  puts  on  the  king's  robe,  and  the  purple 
which  he  wears  at  once  declares  his  dignity  and  starts 
a  hundred  new  questions  concerning  him.  So  when 
God  tells  us  any  new  thing  about  Himself,  that  new 
revelation,  that  new  light,  is  like  a  garment.  It  utters 
and  it  hides  His  majesty.  Through  it  we  see  what  He 
is ;  and  yet  a  hundred  new  questions  about  how  He  can 
be  that,  and  what  it  means  for  us  that  He  should  be 
that,  and  what  more  which  He  must  also  be  His  being 
that  involves,  come  crowding  on  us. 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   LIGHT.  315 

Think  how  it  must  have  been  in  the  disciples'  inter- 
course with  Jesus.  Their  earliest  life  with  Him  was 
very  simple.  They  seemed  to  understand  Him  wholly. 
They  thought  that  they  knew  perfectly  what  He  was 
and  what  He  had  come  to  do.  They  learned  to  love 
Him  dearly  and  intimately  in  this  familiarity.  Now 
and  then  in  those  first  chapters  of  the  gospels  He  says 
some  deep  word  or  does  some  unexpected  action  which 
seems  to  startle  them  and  brings  a  puzzled  question 
which  is  like  the  first  drop  before  the  tempest  of  puz- 
zled questions  concerning  Christ  which  has  come  since 
and  which  is  still  raging  around  us,  but  generally  in 
those  earliest  days  they  have  very  few  questions  to  ask ; 
they  seem  to  understand  Him  easily.  By  and  by,  how- 
ever, to  any  one  who  reads  the  Gospels  thoughtfully, 
there  seems  to  come  a  gradual  change.  Jesus  does 
not  withdraw  Himself  from  them.  He  comes  nearer 
and  nearer  to  them  constantly.  He  tells  them  deeper 
and  deeper  truths  about  Himself.  He  opens  remoter  and 
remoter  chambers  of  His  history.  "  Before  Abraham 
was,  I  am,"  He  says.  "  I  and  my  Father  are  one,"  He 
says.  As  He  speaks.  He  is  ever  growing  more  and 
more  wonderful  to  His  simple-hearted  followers.  The 
love  which  they  had  given  Him  in  those  first  bright 
transparent  days  is  not  taken  back  or  lessened ;  it  is 
ever  deepening  and  increasing ;  but  it  is  also  ever  being 
filled  with  mystery  and  awe.  By  and  by  comes  the 
night  of  the  Passover  with  its  abundant  revelation.  As 
we  watch  Jesus  sitting  there  and  telling  the  disciples 
truth  after  truth  about  Himself,  what  words  like  the 
old  words  of  the  Psalmist  describe  the  scene,  He  is 
"  clothing  Himself  with  light  as  with  a  garment."     We 


316  THE   MYSTERY  OF   LIGHT. 

can  seem  to  see  the  lustrous  raiment  of  truth  gathered 
about  His  familiar  form,  at  once  revealing  it  to,  and 
hiding  it  from,  His  amazed  disciples  ;  revealing  it  to 
their  love,  hiding  it  from  their  understanding.  He 
grows  dearer  and  more  mysterious  to  them  every  mo- 
ment as  He  speaks.  Then  comes  Gethsemane,  and 
then  the  Cross,  and  then  the  Eesurrection,  and  then  the 
Pentecost.  He,  their  Lord,  is  "clothing  Himself  with 
light  as  with  a  garment,"  all  the  while ;  more  light  and 
more  mystery  and  withal  more  love  perpetually,  until 
at  last  the  John  who  had  once  questioned  Jesus  as  if 
He  were  a  scribe  or  teacher,  "  Master,  where  dwellest 
Thou  ? "  is  seen  writing  His  reminiscence  of  it  all  in 
words  that  bum  with  mysterious  reverence,  words  that 
make  us  think  He  wrote  them  on  His  knees.  "  The 
Word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us,  and  we  be- 
held His  glory,  the  glory  as  of  the  only  begotten  of  the 
Father." 

Men  sometimes  shrink  from  following  the  disciples  of 
Jesus  in  this  developing  apprehension  and  adoration  of 
their  Lord.  There  are  some  readers  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment who  cling  to  its  first  chapters,  and  love  to  picture 
to  themselves  over  and  over  again  the  scenes  in  which 
Christ,  sitting  on  the  mountain  or  wandering  by  the 
lake,  talked  like  a  gentle,  noble  master  to  the  simple- 
hearted  men  who  never  dreamed  of  the  majesty  which 
they  were  dealing  with.  Before  such  readers  the  last 
deep  chapters  of  St.  John  and  the  expanse  of  the  epistles 
seem  to  stretch  like  a  great  ocean,  over  which  hang 
thick  clouds,  from  which  come  solemn  sounds  that  dis- 
tress and  frighten  them,  and  on  which  they  do  not 
like  to  launch  away.    And  yet  the  epistles  are  a  true  part 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  LIGHT.  317 

of  the  same  revelation  with  the  gospels.  Tlie  fact  is 
clear  beyond  all  doubt  that  the  disciples  who  had 
walked  with  Jesus  by  Gennesaret  were  the  same  dis- 
ciples who  preached  throughout  Judea  and  far  abroad 
the  power  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  mysterious  salvation 
by  the  life  and  death  of  Christ,  the  crucified  and  risen 
Savior.  Such  change,  beyond  all  doubt,  came  to  those 
men  as  Jesus  revealed  Himself  before  them,  as  in  their 
presence  He  clothed  Himself  with  light  as  with  a  gar- 
ment. 

And  is  a  progress  such  as  theirs,  a  deepened  knowl- 
edge of  the  mystery  of  Christ  such  as  was  given  to  them, 
possible  for  men  to-day  ?  Indeed  it  is  !  If  there  is  any 
man  or  woman  here  this  morning  who  has  honored 
Jesus  Christ,  loved  Him,  believed  Him,  called  Him  the 
noblest  of  men,  the  perfect  man  perhaps ;  and  taken  pride 
in  the  simplicity,  the  definiteness,  the  completeness  of 
such  a  notion  of  Christ ;  pointed  to  it  and  said,  "  Behold 
how  clear  it  is  ;  how  free  from  all  bewildering  mystery ; " 
if  there  is  any  such  Christian  here  to-day  to  whom  it 
can  be  made  known  that  absence  of  mystery  may  be  a 
sign  not  of  abundance  but  of  lack  of  light,  to  whom  then 
his  Christ,  his  teacher,  his  model  man,  may  open  the 
depths  of  His  life  and  manifest  the  higher  nature  on 
which  the  perfection  of  His  humanity  rested ;  if  there 
is  any  Christian  who,  ready  and  glad  to  see  his  Christ 
become  more  mysterious  before  his  eyes  as  He  robes 
Himself  in  fuller  light,  can  take  with  joy  the  word  ot 
that  Christ  as  He  declares  Himself  the  Son  of  God,  to 
such  a  Christian  the  exact  experience  of  the  disciples 
may  be  repeated.  Such  repetitions  are  not  rare.  Con- 
tinually Christ,  trusted  in  His  humanity,  is  making 


318  THE  MYSTEKY   OF   LIGHT. 

known  His  divinity.  It  is  the  effort,  the  tendency,  of 
His  whole  nature  to  do  that  if  men  will  let  Him,  if  only 
they  do  not,  fascinated  with  the  simplicity  of  His  man- 
hood, refuse  to  go  on  and  in  into  the  deeper  truth  which 
He  has  to  give  them  about  Himself 

I  have  dwelt  to-day  on  this  one  point.  I  have  tried 
to  show  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  mystery  of  light, 
and  what  is  its  true  nature.  I  have  tried  to  show  that 
if  God  shows  man  new  and  more  profound  truth  regard- 
ing Himself  the  result  will  certainly  be  a  deepened  mys- 
teriousness  and  a  growth  of  many  questions  too  hard  to 
answer ;  and  therefore  that  the  fact  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  is  full  of  mystery  and  overruns  with  ques- 
tions before  which  the  mind  stands  helpless,  is  not  an 
objection  to  its  truth,  but  is  rather  what  man  ought  to 
look  for  in  any  revelation  which  proceeds  from  God. 

And  now  in  one  last  word,  dear  friends,  what  will 
this  be  to  us  ?  Only,  I  hope,  a  new  encouragement  to 
trust  ourselves  frankly  and  gladly  to  whatever  revela- 
tion God  may  have  to  make  to  us.  I  am  afraid  that 
there  are  many  Trinitarians  who,  in  all  their  faith,  are 
yet  staggered  and  troubled  because  of  its  mysteriousness. 
I  am  afraid  that  there  are  many  Unitarians  who  close 
their  eyes  to  the  deepest  words  of  the  New  Testament 
because  they  too  distrust  the  presence  of  mystery  in 
the  conception  of  God.  I  am  not  pleading  with  you 
now  to  believe  this  or  that  concerning  God,  but  only, 
without  prejudice  or  prepossession,  to  be  willing  to  be- 
lieve whatever  He  shall  show  you  of  Himself  Be  sure 
that  for  such  as  we  are  to  know  such  as  God  is  must  be 
for  us  to  enter  into  a  realm  where  mystery  shall  fill  the 
air.     Above  all,  be  sure  that  it  is  only  by  completest 


THE  MYSTERY  OF   LIGHT.  319 

willingness  to  know  His  completest  truth  that  we  can 
rightly  know  anything  regarding  His  surpassing  na- 
ture. 

With  such  convictions  fastened  in  your  souls,  0  give 
yourselves,  my  friends,  to  Him.  Ask  Him  to  be  your 
Savior.  Ask  Him  to  forgive  your  sins.  Ask  Him  to 
take  your  sins  out  of  you  and  make  you  pure.  Ask 
Him  to  show  you  His  holiness  so  that  you  shall  love  it 
and  make  it  your  own,  growing  holy  like  Him.  Ask 
Him  to  save  you  in  all  the  unknown  wants  of  your 
poor  broken  life,  where  you  are  not  even  able  now  to 
know  that  you  need  salvation.  Ask  Him  to  do  this  and 
He  will  do  it  all.  And  as  He  does  it,  let  yourself  be- 
lieve, without  a  hesitation ;  let  yourself  believe  in  the 
divinity  of  Him  who  alone  could  do  so  divine  a  work  as 
the  forgiveness  and  salvation  of  a  soul.  That  is  the  only 
way  in  which  men  ever  come  really  and  truly  to  believe 
in  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ. 


XIX. 

THE  ACCUMULATION  OF  FAITH. 

"  Behold,  He  smote  the  rock,  that  the  waters  gushed  out,  and  th« 
streams  overflowed.  Can  He  give  bread  also  ?  Can  He  give  flesh  for  His 
people  ?  "  —  Psalm  Ixxviii.  20. 

Belief  in  God  is  such  a  large  action  of  our  human 
nature,  and  appears  in  such  a  multitude  of  ways,  that 
unbelief  also,  its  opposite,  must  have  many  forms.  God 
is  so  vast,  and  for  man  to  lay  hold  on  Him  is  so  complete 
an  action,  that  it  is  no  wonder  if  that  hold  may  fail  at 
any  one  of  many  points ;  and  no  two  unbelievers,  as  no 
two  believers,  can  be  perfectly  alike.  In  the  Psalm  from 
which  I  take  my  text  the  singer  is  telling  the  old  story 
of  the  national  history  of  the  Jews.  All  the  escape 
from  Egypt  and  the  journey  through  the  desert  is  re- 
counted ;  and  in  this  twentieth  verse  the  peevish  and 
complaining  Israelites  are  heard  in  the  wilderness, 
doubting  whether  God,  although  he  had  done  much  for 
them,  can  still  supply  the  new  needs  which  are  coming 
into  sight.  "  Yea  they  spake  against  God ;  they  said, 
Can  God  furnish  a  table  in  the  wilderness  ? "  And  then  — 
to  quote  the  Prayer  Book  version  of  the  Psalm  —  "  He 
smote  the  stony  rock  indeed  that  the  water  gushed  out 
and  the  streams  flowed  withal ;  but  can  He  give  bread  also, 
or  provide  flesh  for  His  people  ? "  You  see  what  kind 
of  unbelief  is  here.  It  does  not  deny  the  past  fact.  It 
acknowledges  that  God  has  done  one  miracle  of  mercy. 


THE   ACCUMULATION   OF  FAITH.  321 

But  in  that  miracle  it  finds  no  such  revelation  of  God 
Himself  and  His  perpetual  character  and  love  as  gives 
assurance  that  He  will  again  be  powerful  and  merciful. 
These  Israelites  have  no  accumulated  faith.  They  are 
just  where  they  were  before  the  last  miracle  relieved 
them.  That  miracle  stands  wholly  by  itself  It  does 
not  promise  or  imply  another.  The  old  bright  scene 
comes  up  before  them  ;  the  sparkling  water  tumbling  out 
of  the  hard,  sunburnt  stone.  They  revel  in  the  recollec- 
tion ;  but  then  they  turn  back  to  their  present  hunger, 
and  the  chance  of  bread  and  flesh  seems  only  the  more 
desperate  because  of  the  mocking  and  tantalizing  re- 
membrance of  the  water  from  the  rock. 

The  power  of  accumulation  of  life  differs  extremely 
in  different  men.  Some  men  gather  living  force,  wisdom, 
faith,  out  of  every  experience.  Other  men  leave  the 
whole  experience  behind  them  and  carry  out  with  them 
nothing  but  the  barren  recollection  of  it.  And  the  dif- 
ference, when  we  examine  it,  depends  on  this ;  on  whether 
the  man  has  any  conception  of  a  continuous  unbroken 
principle  or  personal  association  running  through  life, 
and  bringing  out  of  each  experience  its  soul  and  essence 
to  be  perpetually  kept.  It  is  something  like  this.  Two 
fields  of  wholly  different  soils  lie  side  by  side.  Neither 
is  mingled  with  the  other.  The  traveller  who  simply 
tramps  across  them  leaves  one  behind  him  as  he  climbs 
the  stile  and  enters  on  the  other  as  a  wholly  new  expe- 
rience. But  let  a  stream  flow  through  them  and  it  binds 
their  life  together.  It  takes  the  essence  out  of  the  soil 
of  the  first  and  mixes  it  with  the  soil  of  the  second. 
The  second  not  merely  remembers  the  first  as  something 
that  lies  next  to  it,  something  that  it  has  seen  across 

21   " 


322  THE  ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH. 

the  wall  It  receives  that  first  field  into  itself  and  mod- 
ifies its  own  life  by  its  presence  through  the  ministry  of 
that  stream,  which  is  common  to  them  both.  Now  so 
it  is,  it  seems  to  me,  with  some  event  of  your  earlier  life. 
You  look  back  to  something  which  happened  to  you  or 
which  you  did  when  you  were  fifteen  years  old.  That 
event  may  be  to  you  to-day  a  mere  recollection,  merely 
a  relic  which  stays  in  your  memory  ;  or  it  may  be  the 
source  of  a  power  which  pervades  your  life.  What  will 
decide  which  it  shall  be  ?  Will  it  not  depend  upon 
whether  you  understand  that  event  and  see  in  it  the 
exhibition  of  principles  in  whose  power  you  are  still 
living ;  or  whether  it  is  merely  an  accident,  unintelligible, 
with  no  perceptible  cause,  with  no  reasonable  explana- 
tion ?  A  living  principle,  a  deep  continuous  conviction 
of  the  meaning  of  life,  is  the  stream  that  makes  the  new 
fields  gather  and  keep  the  richness  of  the  old.  Suppose 
you  had  a  sickness  ten  years  ago.  If  you  understand 
what  it  was  that  cured  you,  then  the  memory  of  that 
sickness  is  a  power,  and  you  see  a  new  sickness  of  the 
same  sort  coming  with  less  fear.  Suppose  you  escaped 
in  some  great  business  crisis  five  years  ago.  If  your 
escape  seems  to  you  a  lucky  accident,  you  tremble  when 
you  see  a  new  business  crisis  coming,  for  it  is  not 
likely  that  such  a  lucky  accident  can  happen  twice.  "  I 
escaped  once,"  you  say ;  "  but  I  cannot  hope  to  get  off 
safe  again."  But  if  you  know  how  you  escaped;  if 
that  old  struggle  was  to  you  a  revelation  of  great  per- 
petual principles  that  rule  the  business  world  and  which, 
as  a  new  need  of  them  occurs,  come  back  to  you  famil- 
iarly, then  the  old  recollection  is  a  power.  Filled  with 
its  inspiration  you  go  on  bravely  to  meet  the  now  intel- 


THE  ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH.  323 

ligible  danger.  Or  if  you  are  a  public  man,  and  it  seema 
tx)  you  nothing  but  a  series  of  happy  chances  that  the 
country  has  thus  far  weathered  the  storms  and  kept 
off  the  rocks  that  have  beset  her  voyage  through  the 
century,  then  no  wonder  that  you  look  forward  with 
dread  and  feel  that  it  is  only  a  question  of  time  how  soon 
she  goes  to  pieces.  But  if  you  have  studied  your  coun- 
try's past  history  deeply  and  wisely  enough  to  see  that 
in  every  emergency  it  has  been  her  essential  principles 
that  have  saved  her,  then  you  are  able  to  look  all  com- 
ing dangers  in  the  face  and  devote  yourself  not  to  plan- 
ning how  you  and  your  fellow  voyagers  can  be  saved 
from  the  wreck  when  the  ship  has  gone  to  ruin ;  but 
how  the  ship  can  be  kept  most  purely  and  directly  in 
the  power  of  those  first  essential  principles  on  which 
her  safety  in  any  emergency  must  rely  and  which,  if 
they  can  have  free  play,  will  always  save  her. 

Let  these  be  illustrations,  and  now  turn  and  think  of 
God.  He  is  the  great  first  principle.  He  is  the  under- 
power,  the  abiding  base  and  background  of  our  human 
life.  His  will,  uttering  His  nature,  is  the  stream  that 
flows  from  field  to  field  of  our  existence  and  binds  them 
all  together.  The  things  that  have  to  do  with  Him  must 
have  to  do  with  one  another.  Now,  once  again,  some- 
thing came  to  you  twenty  years  ago,  something  very 
rich  and  beautiful,  something  which  has  made  life  bright 
and  wonderful  ever  since.  It  may  have  been  your  birth ; 
perhaps  you  are  only  twenty  years  old.  Life  began  for 
you  twenty  years  back.  It  may  have  been  a  great  affec- 
tion. It  may  have  been  a  great  new  truth.  It  may 
have  been  the  sight  of  a  character  which  revealed  the 
possibilities  of  humanity  to  you.     Whatever  it  was,  the 


324  THE   ACCUMULATION    OF   FAITH. 

great  question  about  that  acquisition  to-day  is.  Do  you 
indeed  know  tiiat  God  gave  it  to  you  ?  As  you  feel  it, 
do  you  feel,  down  through  it,  God  ?  Does  it  reveal,  has 
it  all  along  through  these  years  been  revealing,  God  to 
you  ?  You  know  that  I  mean  something  more  by  this 
than  merely  whether  you  have  learned  to  say  piously 
about  it,  "  It  is  God's  gift"  I  mean  this,  Has  its  value 
for  you  become  lodged  in  this,  that  it  is  a  token  of  God's 
love  for  you  and  a  revelation  of  His  nature ;  just  as  the 
picture  on  your  walls,  which  a  friend  gave  you  years 
ago,  shines  with  the  perpetual  brightness  of  his  kindness 
and  his  taste.  The  Jews,  you  know,  in  our  verse  said, 
"  He,"  that  is  God,  "  He  smote  the  stony  rock  indeed,  and 
the  water  gushed  out ; "  but  really  they  did  not  com- 
pletely know  and  believe  that  He,  that  God,  had  done 
it  They  did  not  know  and  believe  it  so  that  with  the 
memory  of  it  God  came  up  in  their  remembrance  and 
filled  their  life.  If  that  had  been,  they  could  not  have 
asked  any  question  about  any  future  manifestation  of 
His  power.  This  is  the  question  then,  Does  the  joy  of 
living  which  makes  you  rejoice  that  you  were  born ; 
does  the  joy  of  thinking,  the  joy  of  honoring  your 
humanity  as  some  great  man  exhibits  it  to  you ;  does 
each  of  these  joys  reveal  God  to  you  ?  If  it  does,  it 
becomes  a  fountain  of  faith.  If  it  does  not,  it  be- 
comes only  a  beautiful  memory.  There  is  all  that 
difference.  It  is  the  difference  between  a  thicket  of 
ferns  lovely  with  their  exquisite  leafage,  and  another 
thicket  up  into  which  gushes  and  wells  perpetually  the 
cool  water  from  the  exhaustless  cisterns  underneath  for 
the  refreshment  of  thirsty  men. 

The  unbelief  then  of  which  we  have  to  speak  is  one 


THE  ACCUMULATION   OF  FAITH.  325 

which  so  fails  to  find  in  the  past  events  of  life  a  revela- 
tion of  God,  that  those  past  events  have  no  strength  or 
divine  assurance  to  give  to  the  new  problems  and  emer- 
gencies of  life  as  they  arise.  This  kind  of  unbelief,  I 
think  we  shall  see,  is  very  constant.  See  how  it  comes 
in  to  break  up  the  unity  of  life.  A  boy  passes  through 
his  boyhood.  It  is  full  of  happiness  and  a  boy's  healthy 
pleasure.  Happy  at  home,  happy  in  the  playground, 
happy  at  school,  those  bright  and  breezy  years  slip  by. 
When  they  are  gone  the  boy  stands  on  the  brink  of 
manhood  and  looks  over  into  the  untrodden  years.  Are 
the  problems,  the  diificulties,  the  temptations  which  he 
sees  there,  just  what  they  would  be  if  he  had  not  already 
passed  through  boyhood  ?  Certainly  not,  if  boyhood  has 
given  him  anything  of  a  real  faith  in  God.  Certainly 
not,  if  all  these  happinesses  which  have  come  to  him 
are  recognized  as  God's  gifts,  and  if  through  the  gifts  he 
has  known  God  the  Giver.  Then,  though  he  must  leave 
the  gifts  behind,  he  carries  the  Giver  with  him  into  the 
manhood  that  he  is  entering.  That  is  the  true  unity  of 
life.  It  is  the  unity  of  a  long  journey  in  which,  though 
the  quick  railroad  is  constantly  compelling  you  to  leave 
each  new  scene  behind  you,  the  wise  kind  company  of 
the  friend  whom  you  are  travelling  with,  and  who  in 
each  new  scene  has  had  the  chance  to  show  you  some- 
thing new  of  his  wisdom  and  kindness,  has  been  contin- 
ually with  you  and  bound  the  long  journey  into  a  unit. 
This  is  the  sort  of  life  that  Wordsworth  was  imasining 
when  he  sang  :  — 

"The  child  is  father  of  the  man; 
And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety." 


326  THE   ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH. 

We  can  see  how  this  must  come  when  underneath 
the  habits  of  any  period  of  life  we  recognize  and  find 
the  revelation  of  God.  The  habits  are  rigid,  uniform 
and  untransferable.  But  God  is  infinitely  various.  His 
great  arms  can  hold  the  infant  like  a  mother,  and  build 
a  strong  wall  about  the  mature  man  who  is  fighting  the 
noonday  fight  of  life,  and  lay  the  bridge  of  sunset  over 
which  the  old  man's  feet  may  walk  serenely  into  the 
eternal  day.  If  the  issue  of  any  period  of  life  is  merely 
certain  habits,  we  must  lay  them  aside  as  we  go  on.  If 
the  issue  of  any  period  of  life  is  a  certainty  of  God,  that 
we  may  freely  carry  over  for  the  enrichment  of  the  new ; 
just  as  the  clothes  which  you  wore  when  you  were  a  boy 
you  have  outgrown,  but  the  health  which  filled  you  then 
is  in  you  now. 

And  this  is  so  not  merely  as  one  passes  from  youth  to 
age,  but  also  as  one  sees  any  new  occupation  or  duty 
opening  before  him.  You  have  been  in  one  business 
and  you  are  going  into  another.  You  have  weighed  all 
the  chances.  You  have  used  all  the  discretion  and  judg- 
ment that  you  possess.  You  believe  that  you  are  fit  for 
the  larger  work.  And  yet,  as  you  sit  thinking  it  over 
the  night  before  the  new  shop  is  to  be  opened  and  the 
new  advertisement  is  to  stand  in  the  papers,  you  are  full 
of  your  misgivings.  Shall  I  succeed  ?  Am  I  not  leav- 
ing a  certainty  for  an  uncertainty  ?  I  know  that  God 
has  prospered  me  thus  far,  but  will  He,  can  He,  help  me 
here  ?  And  then,  just  in  proportion  to  the  purity  and 
absoluteness  of  your  confidence  that  it  has  really  been 
God  who  has  helped  you,  and  the  simplicity  and  com- 
pleteness with  which  you  resolve  that,  in  the  new  busi- 
ness as  in  the  old,  you  will  be  His  obedient  servant  and 


THE   ACCUMULATION    OF   FAITH.  327 

put  no  obstacle  in  the  way  of  His  helping  you  stUl,  just 
in  proportion  to  your  faith  and  consecration,  wiU  be  the 
courage  with  which  you  see  the  dawn  of  the  new  day 
that  is  to  bring  to  you  the  untried  task. 

Take  one  step  more.  Suppose  a  human  soul  looking 
out  into  the  mysterious  and  unrevealed  experiences  of 
the  everlasting  world.  The  window  of  death  is  wide 
open,  and  the  shivering  soul  stands  up  before  it  and 
looks  through  and  sees  eternity.  No  wonder  that  it 
trembles.  The  warm,  bright,  familiar  room  of  earthly 
life,  where  it  has  dwelt  so  long,  lies  there  behind  it ;  and 
before  it,  outside  the  window,  the  vast,  dim,  path- 
less, unknown  world  of  immortality.  How  shall  the 
soul  carry  with  it  the  sense  of  safety  and  assurance  in 
God,  which  it  has  won  within  His  earthly  care,  forth 
into  this  unknown,  untrodden  vastness  whither  it  now 
must  go?  Only  in  one  way;  only  by  deepening  as 
deeply  as  possible  its  assurance  that  it  is  God  —  not  ac- 
cident, not  its  own  ingenuity,  not  its  brethren's  kind- 
ness —  that  it  is  God  who  has  made  this  earthly  life  so 
rich  and  happy.  God  is  too  vast,  too  infinite  for  earth. 
He  is  too  vast  for  time,  and  needs  eternity.  Wrapped 
into  Him  the  soul  may  be  not  merely  resigned ;  it  may 
be  even  impatient  to  explore  those  larger  regions  where 
the  power  which  has  made  itself  known  to  it  here  shall 
be  able  to  display  to  it  all  the  completeness  of  its  nature 
and  its  love.  As  the  child  of  the  sailor  may  wish  to  go 
to  sea  that  he  may  see  the  father  whom  he  believes  in 
do  his  supreme  work  in  fighting  with  the  midnight  hurri- 
cane ;  as  the  child  of  the  soldier  may  wish  to  see  his 
father  on  the  battle-field ;  and  the  child  of  the  statesman 
may  wish  to  see  his  father  in  the  senate ;  so  the  child  of 


328  THE  ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH. 

God  may  wish  for  eternity,  sure  that  there  upon  the 
vaster  fields  he  shall  see  vaster  exhibitions  of  that  power 
and  grace  which  he  has  learned  completely  to  believe  in 
here. 

And  yet  here,  I  think,  if  a  man  does  really  know  that 
God  is  giving  him  more  and  more  revelations  of  Him- 
self every  day,  increasing  his  faith  by  all  the  various 
treatments  of  his  life,  all  that  is  necessary  for  him  is 
that  he  should  simply  accept  that  constant  gi'owth  in 
faith,  rejoice  each  day  in  the  new  certainty  of  God  which 
is  being  gathered  and  stored  within  him,  and  not  look 
forward,  not  even  ask  himself  how  he  will  meet  the 
large  demands  of  death  and  immortality  when  they 
shall  come.  He  may  be  sure  that  when  they  come 
this  strength  of  faith  which  now  is  being  stored  within 
him  will  come  forth  abundantly  equal  to  the  need.  So 
a  soul  need  not  even  think  of  death  if  only  life  is  filling 
it  with  a  profound  and  certain  consciousness  of  God. 
The  ship  in  the  still  river,  while  its  builder  is  stowing 
and  packing  away  the  strength  of  oak  and  iron  into  her 
growing  sides,  knows  nothing  about  the  tempests  of  the 
mid- Atlantic ;  but  when  she  comes  out  there  and  the 
tempest  smites  her,  she  is  ready.  So  shall  we  best  be 
ready  for  eternity,  and  for  death  which  is  the  entrance 
to  eternity,  not  by  thinking  of  either,  but  by  letting  life 
fill  us  with  the  faith  of  God. 

There  is  one  great  and  perpetual  illustration  of  the 
truth  which  we  are  studying  in  the  history  of  the  Chris- 
tian church  and  of  religious  thought.  There  the  kind 
of  unbelief  of  which  I  have  spoken  is  continually  coming 
out.  It  is  often  very  strong  in  men  who  think  them- 
selves supremely  faithful,  very  champions  of  the  faith- 


THE   ACCUMULATION    OF   FAITH.  o29 

The  Christian  church  lives  through  one  period  of  her 
career ;  she  conquers  tlie  enemies  that  meet  her  there ; 
she  makes  the  hard  rock  yield  her  water ;  she  keeps  her- 
self alive  and  feeds  her  children.     Then  she  passes  on 
into  another  period  with  its  new  needs,  its  call  for  other 
methods  and  for  other  miracles ;  and  always  there  is  a 
spirit  in  the  church  which  trembles  and  has  not  learned, 
from  the  way  in  which  God  has  cared  for  His  church  in 
the  past,  that  He,  the  same  God,  is  able  to  take  care  of 
her  in  the  future  also.     This  is  the  fault  of  all  retro- 
spective Christianity,  of  all  Christianity  which  is  anxious 
to  abide  in  the  old  days,  to  fight  over  and  over  again 
the  battles  of  the  past,  and  to  ignore  or  to  avoid  the 
modern  battles,  the  special  difficulties  which  the  faith 
of  Christ  is  called  upon  to  meet  in  our  own  times.    This 
is  the  fault  of  all  the  Christianity  which  is  panic  stricken 
before  the  enemies  which  it  sees  that  faith  in  Christ 
must  certainly  be  called  upon  to  meet  in  the  near  future. 
I  think  I  hear  the  voices  of  that  panic  from  many  quar- 
ters now.     "  He  smote  the  stony  rock  indeed,  and  the 
water  gushed  out,  but  can  He  give  bread  also,  and  pro- 
vide flesh  for  His  people  ? "     He  answered   the  scep- 
ticism of  the  old  centuries,  but  can   He   answer  the 
subtler,   finer  sceptics  of  to-day  ?      He  overcame   the 
worldliness  of  the  eighteenth  century,  but  can  He  con- 
quer the  materialism  of  the  nineteenth  ?     He  saved  His 
church  when  she  was  persecuted  with  fire  and  the  rack ; 
can  He  save  her  also  when  she  is  tempted  with  tlie 
corruptions  of  prosperity  and  fashion  ?     He  stood  by  lier 
in  the  days  when  Luther  lifted  up  his  voice  for  spiritual 
truth ;  will  He  stand  by  her  also  now  when  it  is  evident 
that  not  Luther  nor  any  other  reformer  has  fathomed 


330  THE   ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH. 

the  truth  of  Christ  completely,  or  brought  the  last  mes- 
sage from  the  lips  of  God  ?  Will  He  staud  by  her  still 
as  she  in  all  humility  tries  to  learn  yet  more  truth  and,  by 
an  inevitable  necessity,  by  a  necessity  that  she  cannot 
escape  and  must  expect  to  encounter,  meets  in  the  at- 
tempt to  learn  profounder  truth  the  danger  of  profounder 
error  ?  These  are  the  questions  that  one  hears.  Accord- 
ing to  the  answers  which  men  and  churches  give  to  them 
they  go  forward  hopefully  or  go  back  timidly.  The  man 
who  sees  in  all  the  history  of  the  Christian  church  one 
great  assurance  that  Christ  is  always  with  His  people, 
and  will  always  help  any  soul  which  reverently  and 
really  wants  to  know  deeper  things  concerning  Him, 
and  will  lead  it  through  many  blunders  and  errors  into 
truth,  —  that  man  goes  forward.  The  man  who  sees  in 
the  history  of  the  Christian  church  only  the  record  that 
in  the  primitive  ages,  or  in  the  reformation  ages,  Christ 
let  His  people  see  certain  truths  concerning  Him  and 
His  ways,  —  that  man  goes  back,  lives  in  what  seemed 
to  him  the  finished  revelation  of  those  days,  tries,  by  the 
imitation  of  their  habits  and  the  constant  repetition  of 
their  phrases,  to  keep  himself  in  their  shadow ;  deserts 
his  own  age,  in  which  God  seems  to  him  to  be  less 
present  and  less  real,  and  lives  among  dead  issues  in 
which  he  knows  was  once  a  living  fire.  But  oh,  if  God 
is  not  really  a  living  God  in  the  world  to-day,  we  have 
no  God.  How  little  it  would  be  —  nay,  truly  it  would  be 
nothing  to  you  and  me,  called,  driven  as  we  are  to  meet 
the  hard  temptations,  to  answer  the  hard  questions  of 
this  very  present  day  —  to  know  that  once  a  God  had 
answered  other  questions  and  made  men  conquerors  over 
other  temptations  in  other  days.     Only  when  all  I  read 


THE   ACCUMULATION   OF  FAITH.  331 

about  that  presence  of  His  life  among  our  human  lives 
makes  me  know  Him  and,  making  me  know  Him,  makes 
me  absolutely  certain  that  He  is  such  that  on  to  the  very 
end  no  servant  of  His  can  meet  a  temptation  which  He 
can  help  His  servant  to  subdue  and  the  help  not  be 
given ;  no  disciple  of  His  can  ask  a  question  which  it 
is  possible  for  Him  to  answer  and  the  answer  be  with- 
held ;  only  when  the  old  history  of  all  the  Christian  ages 
opens  its  heart  to  me  and  gives  me  an  assurance  such  as 
this,  only  then  have  I  attained  to  its  true  use  and  its 
richest  blessing.  With  such  a  power  as  this,  not  merely 
the  men  of  the  past  with  whom  I  agree,  but  the  men 
from  whom  I  most  profoundly  differ,  help  me.  It  is  not 
their  opinions  which  I  adopt ;  it  is  their  spirit ;  it  is  the 
presence  of  God's  Spirit  in  and  with  their  spirits  that 
makes  me  glad  and  hopeful.  I  may  see,  I  do  see,  a  hun- 
dred times,  how  it  was  that,  even  with  God's  Spirit  in 
them,  they  came  only  to  partial  truth,  to  truth  mixed 
and  clouded  with  mistake.  So  while  I  am  made  hope- 
ful of  God's  presence,  I  am  made  also  conscious  of  my 
own  responsibility,  and  watchful  over  the  condition  of 
the  mind  into  which  I  bid  that  Spirit  welcome.  Alas 
if  it  were  not  so.  Alas  for  us  if  we  were  compelled  to 
assent  to  all  the  theology  of  Calvin  or  of  Channing,  be- , 
fore  we  could  thank  Christ  for  the  guidance  which  His 
Spirit  gave  both  to  Calvin  and  to  Channing  in  their) 
search  for  truth,  and  gather  from  it  strong  assurance' 
that  His  spirit  would  help  us  too.  Forever  the  past 
of  the  church  is  to  us  but  a  great  curiosity-shop,  into 
which  we  go  to  steal  a  bit  of  bric-a-brac  which  suits  our 
fancy  and  which  we  can  stick  up  incongruously  in  our 
modern  homes,  unless  out  of  it  all  there  issues  one  sireat 


332  THE  ACCUMULATION   OF  FAITH. 

assurance  that  Christ  has  always  been  with  every  soul 
which  would  receive  Him ;  in  different  ways  according 
to  each  soul's  circumstances  and  nature ;  in  different  de- 
grees according  to  each  soul's  receptivity;  but  that  always 
and  everywhere  He  has  given  Himself  to  every  soul  that 
would  receive  Him  and  that  therefore,  if  we  will  re- 
ceive Him,  He  will  give  Himself  to  us.  When  we 
gather  from  it  that  assurance,  the  past  of  the  church 
becomes  to  us  the  fountain  of  strength  and  the  oracle 
of  truth. 

The  Church  is  led  into  new  ways  of  work  and  wor- 
ship. The  State  adopts  new  policies.  Society  puts  on 
new  manners.  Nay,  even  the  Faith  asserts  her  doc- 
trines in  new  forms.  And  yet  in  all  of  them  there  must 
be  continuity  and  unity.  The  Church,  the  State,  Soci- 
ety, the  Faith,  they  are  not  perishing,  and  new  churches, 
states,  societies,  faiths,  taking  their  places  every  year. 
They  are  the  same  continuously.  How  can  one  know 
this  and  understand  it  ?  Only  by  apprehending  the 
spiritual  power  which  is  the  soul  of  each,  and  seeing 
how  that  remains  the  same  through  everything.  It  is 
like  the  freedom  which  a  workman  gains  when  he  has 
mastered  the  principles  of  the  trade  he  is  engaged  in. 
So  long  as  he  is  only  familiar  with  its  methods  and  its 
tools  he  is  slavish  and  uniform.  He  cannot  imagine 
the  thing  that  he  does  being  done  in  any  but  one  way. 
Those  who  are  doing  his  thing  in  other  ways  than  his 
seem  to  him  not  to  be  doing  it.  But  as  soon  as  he  has 
grasped  its  principle  he  is  flexible  and  free.  He  values 
not  the  method  but  the  thing ;  and  then  there  is  true 
unity  between  him  and  all  others  who,  in  most  distant 
times  and  places,  are  doing  what  it  is  the  business  of 


THE   ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH.  333 

his  life  to  do.  Every  man's  business,  whatever  it  be, 
becomes  a  liberal  education  to  him  just  as  soon  and 
just  as  far  as  lie  lives  not  in  its  methods  but  in  its  prin- 
ciples. Now  God  is  the  principle  which  underlies  all 
this  business  of  human  living.  The  methods  of  living 
are  manifold.  The  principle  of  life  is  one.  The  man 
who  lives  in  the  methods  loses  the  freedom  and  the 
unity  of  life.  The  man  who  lives  in  the  principle,  in 
loving,  grateful,  obedient  communion  with  God,  grows 
free  with  a  divine  liberty,  and  is  a  true  brother  of  all 
the  working  children  of  God  throughout  the  ages  and 
throughout  the  world. 

In  the  few  moments  which  remain,  let  me  try  to 
come  close  to  your  personal  religious  life  and  see  how 
there  the  unbelief  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  is 
always  trying  to  creep  in.  You  look  back  over  the 
years  in  which  you  have  been  trying  to  serve  your 
Savior,  and  what  do  you  see  ?  Many  a  temptation  con- 
quered by  His  strength ;  many  a  sin  forgiven  and 
turned  by  gratitude  for  His  forgiveness  into  an  inspira- 
tion ;  many  a  hard  crisis  where  Christ  your  Lord  has 
been  all  sufficient  for  you.  Why  is  it  that  to-day,  in 
your  present  temptation,  in  your  present  need,  you  feel 
so  little  sure  of  Him  ?  A  new  desert  openihg  before 
you  frightens  you  even  while  you  remember  with  thanks- 
giving how  He  led  you  through  the  old.  The  thanks- 
giving dies  away  upon  your  lips  for  the  past  mercy  as 
you  come  in  sight  of  the  new  emergency  for  the  brave 
meeting  of  which  it  would  seem  as  if  that  past  mercy 
ought  to  have  fitted  you  completely.  "  He  smote  the 
stony  rock  indeed,  that  the  water  gushed  out  and  the 


334  THE   ACCUMULATION   OF  FAITH. 

streams  flowed  withal."  There,  as  brightly  as  if  you 
still  were  revelling  in  their  refreshment,  the  fresh  springs 
sparkle  and  sing  before  your  recollection.  "  But,"  and 
then  you  turn  to  the  hunger  and  weariness  that  seem  to 
be  awaiting  you  ;  "  but,  can  He  give  bread  also,  or  pro- 
vide flesh  for  His  people  ?  "  0,  to  how  many  souls  all 
that  has  come  with  a  terrible  surprise  and  disappoint- 
ment !  They  thought  that  they  were  ready  for  any- 
thing. They  thought  that  out  of  all  the  rich  blessing 
of  the  past  they  had  gathered  a  strength  that  nothing 
could  break  down,  a  courage  that  nothing  could  dismay. 
But  now  they  stand  in  front  of  the  new  temptation  or 
the  new  pain  and  tremble  like  children,  just  as  if  they 
had  never  seen  a  temptation  or  a  pain  before.  What 
does  it  mean  ?  It  must  mean  that  out  of  the  old  mercy 
they  had  not  gathered  God.  They  have  come  out  of  it 
with  thankfulness  for  release,  with  soberness,  with  hope, 
with  joy ;  but  they  have  not  brought  a  deep  and  abid- 
ing fellowship  with  Christ,  a  firm,  immovable  confi- 
dence that  they  are  His  and  He  is  theirs,  to  take  with 
them  into  the  midst  of  the  new  need  which  they  have 
reached.  If  their  terror,  as  the  new  trial  comes,  means 
anything  more  than  that  instinctive  shrinking  from 
pain  which  is  part  of  our  very  physical  humanity  and 
which  has  no  taint  of  spiritual  weakness  in  it,  this  must 
be  what  it  means.  There  is  such  a  difference  between 
coming  out  of  sorrow  thankful  for  relief,  and  coming 
out  of  sorrow  full  of  sympathy  with  and  trust  in  Him 
who  has  released  us.  Nine  lepers  hurry  off  to  show 
themselves  with  their  white  skins  to  the  priest.  One 
leper  only  waits  to  cast  himself  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  and 
worship  Him.     Tell  me,  will  not  those  nine  be  different 


THE  ACCUMULATION   OF   FAITH.  335 

from  that  one  if  ever  a  new  disease  should  fall  upon 
them  all  ? 

Let  that  one  leper  be  the  type  of  the  soul  to  whom 
the  whole  blessedness  of  a  blessing  from  Christ  has 
come.  Not  only  the  health  but  the  Healer  he  delights 
in.  Not  only  the  salvation  but  the  Savior  is  his  glory 
and  his  joy.  Such  souls  there  are.  I  know  that  some 
of  yours  are  such ;  souls  to  which  all  the  deliverances 
and  the  educations  that  have  filled  their  past  lives  are 
precious,  not  merely  for  the  safety  and  the  instruction 
which  they  have  brought,  but  far  more  for  the  personal 
knowledge  of  the  Deliverer  and  the  Teacher  which  has 
been  won  in  them,  and  in  whose  strength  the  soul  looks 
on  and  faces  all  that  the  future  has  to  bring  without  a 
fear.  "  He  smote  the  stony  rock  and  the  water  gushed 
out.  Therefore  I  know  He  can  give  me  bread  and  flesh ; 
He  will  give  me  bread  and  flesh  if  bread  and  flesh  are 
what  I  ought  to  have." 

So  to  the  soul  tliat  finds  in  all  life  new  and  ever 
deeper  knowledge  of  Christ,  the  Lord  of  Life,  life  is  for- 
ever accumulating.  Every  passing  event  gets  a  noble 
value  from  the  assurance  that  it  gives  us  of  God.  This 
is  the  only  real  transfiguration  of  the  dusty  road,  of  the 
monotony  and  routine  of  living.  It  is  all  bright  and 
beautiful  if,  in  it  all,  God  is  giving  us  that  certainty  of 
Himself,  by  which  we  shall  be  fit  to  meet  everything 
that  we  shall  have  to  meet  in  this  world  and  the  world 
to  come. 


XX. 

CHRISTIAN   CHARITY. 

"  And  there  came  a  traveller  unto  the  rich  man;  and  he  spared  to  take  of 
his  own  flock  and  his  own  herd  to  dress  for  the  wayfaring  man  that 
was  come  unto  him."  —  2  Samuel  xii.  4. 

I  WANT  to  speak  to  you  this  morning  of  the  relations 
between  the  rich  and  the  poor  in  our  city  life  ;  and 
these  verses  from  the  OKI  Testament  suggest,  in  the  way 
in  which  the  Old  Testament  always  suggests  the  New,  in 
the  way  of  metaphor  and  parable,  the  fuU  gospel  truth 
at  which  I  hope  that  we  shall  be  able  to  arrive. 

The  mixture  of  gold  and  clay  of  which  our  human 
nature  is  composed  is  nowhere  so  strikingly  displayed 
as  in  the  constant  tendency  of  men  to  conceive  lofty 
purposes  and  then  to  try  to  attain  them  by  mean  and 
sordid  methods.  We  are  so  used  to  the  sight  of  it,  that 
we  do  not  feel  how  strange  it  is.  That  a  being  should 
seek  nothing  noble,  should  Kve  a  brute's  life  through 
and  through,  that  would  be  intelligible  enough.  That  a 
being  should  seek  high  things  and  then  refuse  to  take 
any  low  ways  to  reach  them,  should  rather  give  up  the 
hope  of  reaching  them  at  all  than  seek  them  by  un- 
worthy ways  ;  that  too  would  be  intelligible.  But  that 
men  should  seek  the  very  highest,  earnestly,  zealously, 
genuinely  seek  it,  and  yet  make  the  method  of  their 
search  consist  in  acts  which  contradict  the  very  essen- 
tial ideas  of  that  which  they  are  seeking,  this  surely 


CHRISTIAN   CHARITY.  337 

shows  a  strange  condition  of  our  human  life.  Men  try- 
to  get  more  close  to  God  by  hating,  persecuting,  mur- 
dering, God's  chihlren.  Men  try  to  convert  their  fellow- 
men  to  what  they  know  is  truth  by  arguments  which 
they  know  just  as  well  are  lies.  Men  are  captivated 
with  the  idea  of  self-denial,  and  then  they  invent  in- 
genious ways  to  make  self-denial  comfortable  and  easy. 
The  high  impulse  and  the  low  self-indulgent  method  are 
both  real,  and  this  same  confused  and  contradictory  hu- 
manity of  ours  is  able  to  contain  them  both.  Men  do 
not  seem  to  know  that,  however  bright  and  strong  they 
frame  the  golden  gallery  of  their  ambition,  the  only 
chance  of  their  getting  up  to  it  must  be  in  the  strength 
of  the  stairway  which  they  build.  They  are  always 
buildijig  steps  of  straw  to  climb  to  heights  of  gold. 

In  this  old  story  from  the  book  of  Samuel  we  have  a 
picture  of  a  hospitable  man,  a  man  who  really  wanted 
to  help  the  poor  traveller  who  came  to  him,  but  who 
wanted  to  help  him  with  another  man's  property,  to 
feed  him  on  a  neighbor's  sheep.  There  is  real  charity 
in  the  impulse.  There  is  essential  meanness  in  the  act. 
"  He  spared  to  take  of  his  own  flock  and  his  own  herd 
to  dress  for  the  wayfaring  man  that  was  come  unto 
him."  Here  is  real  kindliness  and  real  selfishness  in 
the  same  heart ;  and  not  in  struggle  with  one  another 
but  in  most  peaceful  compromise.  "  I  want  to  feed  this 
guest  of  mine,"  the  rich  man  says.  "  How  fortunate 
that  I  am  able  to  do  it  without  encroaching  on  myself, 
without  taking  of  my  own  flock  and  my  own  herd." 
And  by  and  by  there  sits  tlie  guest  before  the  smoking 
feast,  and  the  host's  sheep  are  all  heard  safe  and  bleating 
through  the  open  windows. 

22 


338  CHRISTIAN   CHARITY. 

I  have  said  that  this  Old  Testament  story  was  a  sort 
of  parable  of  New  Testament  truth.  It  might  be  more 
than  that.  It  might  be  traced  into  almost  literal  appli- 
cation. No  doubt  in  these  our  modern  days  we  do  pre- 
cisely what  this  strange  mixed  creature  of  tlie  book  of 
Samuel  did.  We  feed  the  poor  whom  we  pity  on  our 
neighbor's  sheep.  A  great  deal  of  our  official  charity, 
of  our  support  of  charitable  societies  which  we  urge 
other  men  to  support  while  we  are  ready  to  disburse 
their  riches  with  a  patronizing  condescension  almost  as 
if  they  were  our  own  gift,  comes  very  near  the  pattern 
of  this  ancient  benefactor.  But  what  I  want  most  to 
speak  of  is  not  exactly  that.  There  is  what  we  may 
call  perhaps  a  development,  a  refinement,  of  his  self- 
deception,  which  escapes  its  grossness  and  yet  keeps  and 
repeats  its  essential  vice.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it 
may  be  said  that  a  man  meaning  to  be  charitable,  and 
perhaps  freely  bestowing  his  money  on  the  poor,  still 
spares  to  take  of  that  which  is  most  truly  and  intimately 
his  own  to  give  to  the  wayfaring  men  who  are  always 
coming  to  him  in  the  complications  of  our  life.  It  is 
this  sort  of  self-indulgence  into  which  many  most  ex- 
cellent people  are  always  falling ;  and  it  is  this  which 
our  best  thought  and  our  newest  plans  about  charity  are 
feeling  very  deeply  must  somehow  be  changed  before 
the  relations  between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  between  the 
householders  and  the  wayfarers,  can  be  what  they  ought 
to  be  in  a  Christian  land. 

For  one  of  the  truths  about  the  advancing  culture  of 
a  human  nature  is  that  it  is  always  deepening  the  idea 
of  possession  and  making  it  more  intimate.  "  My  own  " 
are  always  becoming  more  and  more  sacred  M'ords  to 


CHRISTIAN    CHARITY.  339 

growing  men.  What  is  your  own  ?  In  the  crude  savage 
state,  in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  childhood  beyond 
which  many  men  never  get,  it  is  your  goods  and  chat- 
tels, your  money  and  your  houses  and  your  clothes. 
They  are  your  property.  Then  grow  a  little  finer  man, 
and  what  succeeds  ?  You  come  to  certain  habits,  certain 
ways  of  life,  the  tokens  and  signs  of  certain  privileges 
which  you  have  enjoyed.  These  mark  your  deepened 
conception  of  your  personality.  You  value  yourself  be- 
cause of  these  ;  the  manners  of  a  gentleman,  the  habits 
of  a  man  who  has  lived  well  and  is  well-bred.  You  look 
down  on  the  rich  man,  however  rich  he  be,  who  has  not 
these.  Mere  wealth  becomes  to  you  only  the  garment 
which  sets  off  the  habits  of  your  cultivated  life,  and 
which  is  yours  only  in  the  moderate  sense  in  which  the 
garment  ever  is  the  man's.  He  might  lose  it  or  cast  it 
away,  and  yet  still  keep  all  himself.  But  b}'  and  by  you 
become  yet  a  profounder  man.  Below  the  habits  of 
your  life  opens  the  world  of  thought  and  knowledge. 
Ideas  take  hold  of  you.  You  take  hold  of  ideas.  And 
when  you  have  done  that  your  ownership  in  them  be- 
comes so  real  and  vivid,  they  are  so  truly  a  part  of  your- 
self, so  intimately  and  really  yours,  that  it  seems  as  if 
the  previous  ownerships  had  not  deserved  the  name. 
Eiches  are  mere  trinkets,  and  habits  are  mere  tricks.  Of 
neither  will  the  man  say  unreservedly,  "  This  is  mine," 
who  has  found  a  new  sacredness  in  those  words  as  he 
has  learned  to  use  them  of  the  truths  which  have  be- 
come to  him  like  very  life.  And  then  once  more,  when 
life  still  further  deepens,  when  in  the  gi'adual  attainment 
of  character  the  man  comes  to  count  that  his  own  which 
he  is,  when  to  possess  intrinsic  qualities,  to  know  him- 


o40  CHRISTIAN    CHARITY. 

self  brave,  patient,  self-respectful,  humble,  pure,  becomes 
the  satisfaction  of  the  soul,  then  are  not  all  the  previous 
notions  of  possession  once  again  made  slight?  Even  the 
knowledge  which  his  mind  has  won  will  hardly  seem  to 
be  truly  his  own  to  the  man  who  has  realized  with  what 
far  more  intimate  ownersliip  his  whole  nature  has  taken 
possession  of  a  character.  What  we  know  is  like  some- 
thing lent  to  us,  something  that  we  may  possibly  forget, 
something  that  we  may  even  throw  away  in  fuller  light 
It  is  not  ours  forever  like  the  thing  we  are,  and  which 
being  it  once  we  must  be  always  through  the  eterni. 
ties,  unless  in  some  eternity  we  cease  to  be  ourselves. 

These  are  the  deepening  degrees  of  ownership.  You 
see  how,  as  each  one  of  them  becomes  real  to  a  man,  the 
previous  ownerships  get  a  kind  of  unreality.  The  sav- 
age owns  his  forest.  The  man  of  civilization  owns  his 
rich  and  complicated  life,  and  his  houses  and  fields  are 
but  the  symbols  of  the  higher  life  he  has  attained.  The 
scholar,  the  thinker,  has  passed  down  and  into  a  yet  pro- 
founder  property.  He  has  come  to  that  which  no  cir- 
cumstances, no  man,  can  take  away  from  him.  And 
then  the  seeker  after  character,  he  whom  in  Bible  phrase 
we  call  the  "  saint,"  has  gone  into  the  inmost  chamber, 
and  counts  money  and  company  and  even  knowledge 
as  only  the  means  and  assurances  of  the  one  thing  which 
he  really  possesses,  which  is  himself,  his  personal  nature, 
his  character. 

And  now  is  it  not  clear  that  with  this  deepening  of 
the  idea  of  property,  the  idea  of  charity  must  deepen 
also  ?  I  want  to  give  a  poor  man  what  is  mine.  It  is 
my  duty  and  my  wish  to  give.  What  shall  I  give  him  ? 
If  I  have  got  no  farther  into  the  idea  of  property  than 


CHRISTIAN   CHARITY.  341 

the  first  stage,  I  am  satisfied  when  I  have  filled  his  empty 
hands  with  dollars.  But  if  I  have  gone  farther  than 
that,  I  cannot  be  content  till  I  have  bestowed  on  him 
by  personal  care  something  of  that  which  dollars  repre- 
sent to  me  and  without  which  they  would  be  valueless, 
the  noble  and  ennobling  circumstances  which  civiliza- 
tion has  gathered  round  my  lot.  But  if  I  have  gone 
deeper  still  and  learned  to  count  truth  the  one  precious 
thing  in  all  the  world,  I  shall  feel  that  I  have  "  spared 
to  take  of  my  own  "  to  give  him,  till  I  have  at  least  tried 
to  provide  not  merely  for  the  body  but  for  the  mind. 
And  then,  to  take  once  more  the  final  step,  as  soon  as  I 
have  come  to  think  of  character  as  the  one  only  thing 
that  I  can  really  call  my  own,  my  conscience  will  not 
let  me  rest,  I  shall  think  all  my  benefaction  an  imper- 
fect, crippled  thing,  until  I  have  touched  the  springs  of 
character  in  him  and  made  him  the  sharer  of  that  which 
it  is  the  purpose  and  joy  of  my  life  to  try  to  be. 

I  have  dwelt  long  on  this  because  I  wanted  to  make 
clear  the  true  philosophy  of  those  convictions  which  have 
been  growing  stronger  and  stronger  in  the  minds  of  chari- 
table people  of  late  years,  and  which  have  recently  found 
expression  in  the  most  intelligent  and  conscientious  efforts 
for  the  relief  of  poverty.  Evidently  it  is  by  these  con- 
victions that  all  the  best  charity  of  the  future  is  to  be 
inspired.  The  sum  of  those  convictions  is  that  no  relief 
of  need  is  satisfactory,  none  meets  the  whole  want  of 
the  needy  man  or  answers  the  whole  duty  of  the  bene- 
factor, which  stops  short  of  at  least  the  effort  to  inspire 
character,  to  make  the  poor  man  a  true  sharer  in  what 
is  the  real  substance  of  the  rich  man's  wealth.  And  at 
the  bottom  of  this  profouuder  conception  of  charity 


342  CHRISTIAN    CHARITY. 

there  must  Ke,  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  a  deeper  and 
more  spiritual  conception  of  property.  The  ricli  man's 
real  wealth,  what  is  it  ?  Not  his  money  !  He  is  a  poor 
man  to  the  end  if  he  has  nothing  except  that.  And  yet 
it  is  something  associated  with  his  money.  It  is  some- 
thing which  his  money  may  give  him  peculiar  opportu- 
nities to  win  and  keep.  It  is  something  which  came  to 
him  in  the  slow  accumulation  of  his  money.  It  is  a 
character  into  which  enter  those  qualities,  independence, 
intelligence,  and  the  love  of  struggle,  which  are  the  qual- 
ities that  make  true  and  robust  manliness  in  all  the 
ages  and  throughout  all  the  world ;  independence,  or 
what  the  poet  calls  "  the  sweet  sense  of  providing,"  the 
joy  of  self-support ;  intelligence,  or  the  trained  quick- 
ness to  discern  what  is  the  true  nature  and  what  the  true 
relations  of  the  things  about  him;  and  love  of  strug- 
gle, the  capacity  of  buoyant  hope  and  of  delight  in  the 
exercise  of  powers  against  resistance,  —  these  are  the 
substance,  the  heart,  the  core,  of  the  rich  man's  privi- 
lege. And  men  are  coming  more  and  more  to  feel  that 
the  rich  man  does  not  do  his  duty  by  the  poor  man,  the 
rich  class  does  not  really  take  of  its  own  and  give  it  to 
the  poor  class,  unless  by  some  outflow  of  itself  it  gives 
these  qualities,  and  sends  a  perpetual  stream  of  inde- 
pendence, intelligence,  and  struggle,  down  through  the 
social  mass,  making  the  spiritual  privileges  of  those  who 
are  living  on  the  heights  of  life  the  possession  and  in- 
spiration of  the  waiting,  unsuccessful,  discouraged  souls 
that  lie  below. 

And  then,  at  once,  one  thing  is  evident,  that  this 
makes  charity  a  far  more  exacting  thing  than  it  can  be 
without  such  an  idea.     It  clothes  it  in  self-sacrifice.    It 


CHRISTIAN   CHARITY.  343 

requires  the  entrance  into  it  of  a  high  motive.  1  may 
leel  it  well  to  give  a  poor  man  money,  or  even  to  train  him 
in  the  decencies  of  life,  or  even  to  give  him  knowledge, 
from  very  low  motives ;  merely  to  save  myself  from  im- 
portunity, merely  that  he  may  not  offend  my  fastidious 
taste,  merely  that  he  may  become  less  dangerous.  But 
before  I  seriously  undertake  to  make  of  him  an  inde- 
pendent, intelligent,  struggling  brother-man,  to  wake 
him  from  his  torpor,  to  set  him  on  his  feet,  to  kindle  in 
his  soul  that  fire  which  keeps  my  own  soul  full  of  light 
and  warmth,  I  must  have  something  more  than  the 
impulse  of  a  wise  economy.  This  needs  a  sympathy 
which  makes  his  life,  with  all  its  needs  and  miseries,  my 
own.  It  demands  of  me  to  wrestle  with  his  enemiey, 
to  undertake  a  fight  for  him  which  he  is  not  yet  ready  to 
undertake  himself,  to  sacrifice  myself  that  I  may  make 
his  true  self  live. 

Perhaps  this  is  more  clear  if  we  see  how  it  is  illus- 
trated in  all  the  profoundest  gifts  which  men  are  called 
on  to  give  to  their  fellow-men.  The  most  sacred  gift 
that  any  of  us  can  try  to  give  to  his  brother  is  Christian 
faith ;  and  I  am  sure  that  if  you  have  ever  thought  of  it 
at  all  carefully,  you  have  seen  that  just  in  proportion  to 
the  profoundness  of  the  faith  which  you  yourself  })os- 
sessed,  has  always  been  the  profoundness  of  the  act  of 
giving  it,  and  also  the  degree  of  struggle  and  effort  and 
self-sacrifice  with  which  the  gift  has  been  bestowed. 
Here  too  the  conception  of  property  measures  the  con- 
ception of  charity.  If  faith  to  you  meant  nothing 
deeper  than  the  holding  of  certain  well-proved  proposi- 
tions, then  the  giving  of  faith  to  your  brother-man 
meant  only  the  presentation  of  those  propositions  to  his 


344  CHRISTIAN    CHARITY. 

intellect,  all  backed  up  with  their  unanswerable  proof. 
And  it  was  wholly  an  easy  thing  to  do.  You  glibly 
told  the  argument  which  you  had  learned,  and  all  your 
pride  of  partisanship  stood  eagerly  waiting  to  see  assent 
dawn  in  your  pupil's  face.  But  if  faith  by  a  far  deeper 
experience  had  come  to  mean  for  you  something  far 
more  profound,  the  resting  of  your  soul  on  the  soul  of 
your  Father,  the  full  entrance  of  your  nature  into  God's 
nature  by  gratefvd  love,  then  how  much  greater  was  the 
boon  you  had  to  give.  How  much  more  earnest  was 
your  struggle  with  your  disciple  till  he  had  received  it. 
How  you  used  the  well-proved  propositions  only  as  the 
means  of  bringing  these  two  hearts  together,  God's  and 
God's  child's.  How  you  wrestled  and  watched  and 
prayed.  How  at  last,  when  your  friend  really  was  a 
believer,  your  joy  was  all  generous  and  noble ;  fully  and 
thankfully  content  that  he  should  be  a  sharer  of  your 
faith,  even  though  his  views  of  truth  and  the  proposi- 
tions in  which  he  stated  it  were  very  different  from 
yours. 

There  is  a  more  sacred  illustration  even  than  this. 
We  all  think  of  God  as  giving  of  that  which  is  His  own 
to  us  who  are  His  children.  Is  it  not  true  that  accord- 
ing to  our  conception  of  God's  ownership  will  always  be 
our  thought  of  His  bestowal  ?  Property  and  charity 
once  more  will  correspond.  If  when  we  think  of  God, 
the  great  privilege  of  His  perfect  life  seems  to  us  to  be 
that  He  is  perfectly  happy,  that  He  can  never  suffer, 
then  the  great  gift  of  God  will  seem  to  us  to  be  mere 
happiness,  immunity  from  suffering,  reward  to  all  His 
servants  who  have  served  Him  well,  and  simply  for- 
giveness, simply  the  lifting  off  of  penalties  from  the 


CHRISTIAN   CHARITY.  345 

sinners  who  have  repented  of  their  sins.  And  to  such 
gifts  we  cannot  well  attach  the  thought  of  sacrifice  with- 
out the  shaping  of  some  half-commercial  theory  such  as 
long  clung  about  the  truth  of  Christ's  atonement  and 
still  haunts  that  truth  to  the  bewilderment  of  many 
earnest  minds.  But  if,  upon  the  other  hand,  God's 
great  possession  is  His  holiness,  if  the  sublime  preroga- 
tive of  His  perfection  of  which  we  always  think  is  that 
He  never  sius,  then  His  great  gift  will  be  holiness  too. 
Not  safety  from  punishment  but  purity  from  wicked- 
ness will  be  the  promise  which  shines  like  a  star  before 
our  spiritual  hope.  And  in  the  giving  of  that  supreme 
glory  of  His  glorious  life  we  can  well  see,  by  dim  illus- 
trations that  our  own  life  furnishes,  how  there  not 
merely  may  be  but  there  must  be  sacrifice.  The  mys- 
terious intrusion  of  sorrow  for  us  into  the  divine  life, 
the  surrender  of  incarnation,  the  tragedy  of  crucifixion ; 
all  this  becomes  not  clear  of  mystery,  but  full  of  gra- 
cious possibility,  as  soon  as,  with  the  highest  conception 
of  God's  possession,  we  have  mounted  to  the  completest 
idea  of  His  salvation. 

This  last  illustration  gives  me  the  chance  to  say  dis- 
tinctly what  I  have  already  intimated  once  or  twice, 
that  the  deeper  conception  of  benefaction,  which  will 
not  rest  satisfied  with  anything  short  of  the  imparting 
of  character,  still  does  not  do  away  with  the  inferior 
and  more  superficial  ideas.  It  uses  the  lower  forms  of 
gift  still  as  means  or  types  or  pledges.  When  I  think 
of  God  as  the  giver  of  goodness,  I  am  led  not  less  but 
all  the  more  to  thank  Him  for  the  forgiveness  of  my 
sin.  But  that  forgiveness  is  not  any  longer  an  end  in 
itself     It  has  become  to  me  the  means,  the  figure,  the 


346  CHRISTIAN   CHARITY. 

promise,  of  the  holiness,  His  own  holiness,  for  which  He 
is  trying  to  melt  a  way  into  my  soul.  When  I  try  to 
bring  my  friend  to  a  spiritual  faith  in  God,  the  argu- 
ments with  which  I  try  to  meet  his  objections  become 
not  less  but  more  dignified  and  urgent  because  their 
value  lies  not  in  themselves  but  in  the  new  spiritual 
condition  for  which  they  are  laboring  to  make  a  way. 
And  so  when  you  or  I  or  a  whole  charitable  community 
conceives  the  profouuder  thought  that  the  poor  are  not 
merely  to  be  rescued  from  starving  but  inspired  and 
built  up  into  self-support,  intelligence,  and  the  love  of 
struggle,  there  is  in  such  a  new  conviction  no  abandon- 
ment of  the  necessity  of  money-giving.  The  giving  of 
money  becomes  all  the  more  necessary.  Only  it  is 
ennobled  by  being  made  the  type  of  a  diviner  gift  which 
lies  beyond.  Sometimes  the  higher  gift  may  be  so 
directly  given  that  the  type  is  needless.  Sometimes  the 
modern  benefactor  may  say  like  Peter  at  the  temple- 
gate,  "  Silver  and  gold  have  I  none,  but  in  the  name  of 
Jesus  rise  and  walk ; "  but  the  rule  of  life  will  be  that 
the  type  is  needed  for  the  full  work  of  the  reality ;  and 
money  must  be  given  all  the  more  richly  and  willingly, 
the  more  transparent  it  becomes  to  show  the  higher 
purpose  lying  in  behind  it. 

We  live,  as  I  have  said  already,  in  the  midst  of  a  cer- 
tain dissatisfaction  witli  the  methods  of  charity  which 
have  long  prevailed ;  in  the  midst  of  much  misgiving 
and  wondering  whether  perhaps  the  work  of  almsgiving 
men  and  women  and  of  charitable  societies,  which  have 
poured  out  their  benefactions  freely  in  our  great  com- 
munities, has  not  often  done  more  harm  than  good.  All 
thoughtful  citizens  have  welcomed  the  effort  after  a  more 


CHRISTIAN   CHARITY.  347 

systematic  and  intelligent  administration  of  charity  of 
which  we  have  heard  much,  and  of  whose  development 
we  hope  to  see  a  great  deal  more.  We  need  to  remem- 
ber certain  things  as  we  think  about  it.  First,  that  all 
true  organization  helps  spontaneity  and  does  not  hinder 
it.  The  organization  which  discourages  spontaneous  ac- 
tion, and  does  not,  by  due  direction  and  suggestion,  simply 
reduplicate  its  force  and  so  encourage  it,  is  worse  than 
worthless.  And  second,  that  the  effort  to  help  the  poor 
not  merely  out  of  starvation,  but  into  character  and  the 
self-support  which  can  only  come  by  character,  is  not  a 
relaxing  but  a  tightening  of  the  demands  of  charity.  It 
makes  charity  harder  and  not  easier.  It  calls  for  pro- 
founder  sympathy,  and  for  more  sleepless  vigilance.  To 
the  charitable  man  or  the  charitable  community  which 
keeps  both  these  truths  in  mind,  w'hich  is  on  its  guard 
perpetually  against  the  hardening  of  charity  into  a  ma- 
chine, and  expects  perpetually  the  opportunity  of  com- 
pleter and  completer  entrance  into  the  lot  of  the  suffering 
and  needy,  to  such  an  one  there  looms  up,  I  think,  now 
in  the  distance,  a  noble  vision  of  what  the  relations  of  the 
rich  and  poor  in  a  great  city  may  become.  It  is  a  vision 
which  has  the  same  charm  of  soberness,  thoughtfulness, 
thoroughness,  and  infinite  promise,  that  belongs  to  what 
we  may  call  the  more  rational  and  lofty  Christian  faith 
which  it  seems  as  if  God  was  opening  before  His  church. 
It  is  a  vision  not  of  money  recklessly  flung  abroad  in  un- 
discriminating  relief  of  suffering ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand, 
of  tight,  hard  machinery,  grinding  forth  help  without 
sympathy,  from  between  the  wheels  of  inflexible  organiza- 
tion ;  but  a  vision  in  whose  fulfilment  there  shall  be  some- 
thing like  the  true  kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  in  which  no 


348  CHRISTIAN    CIIAIIITV. 

soul  shall  be  satisfied  until,  to  some  other  soul  which  is 
personally  its  care  it  shall  be  giving  the  best  that  God  has 
given  it,  making  use  of  all  lower  gifts  richly  and  freely, 
but  always  with  the  purpose,  never  lost  sight  of,  never 
forgotten,  of  bringing  character,  the  life  of  God,  into  the 
life  of  one  more  of  His  children. 

We,  to  whom  the  question  comes  of  what  the  rich  man 
may  and  can  do  for  the  poor  man,  live  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  city  ;  a  city  ever  growing  greater  and  greater,  and 
putting  on  more  and  more  the  character  which  belongs 
to  those  vast  aggregations  of  humanity  which,  according 
to  some  men's  judgment,  are  the  frightful  plague-spots 
of  the  earth,  and,  in  the  judgment  of  other  men,  are  the 
crowns  and  glories  of  our  planet.  We  have  the  poor  man 
before  us  not  in  the  mere  fact  of  his  poverty,  but  as  his 
poverty  is  always  being  bruised  and  embittered  and  ex- 
asperated in  the  life  of  a  great  city.  Let  us  think  for  a 
moment  what  it  must  be  to  be  poor  here  in  the  midst  of 
these  roaring  and  insulting  streets ;  how  different  the 
burden  of  poverty  must  be  here  in  the  city  from  what 
it  is  when  a  man  has  to  carry  it  through  quiet  country 
lanes,  with  all  the  sweet  sights  and  sounds  of  nature  in 
his  eyes  and  ears.  Then  we  shall  see  something  of  the 
wisdom  and  profoundness  which  the  problem  of  charity 
demands  here  in  the  city.  The  city  poor  man  then,  re- 
member, lives  in  the  sight  of  wealth  which  is  continually 
changinp;  hands.  There  is  no  settled  fixedness  of  prop- 
erty. W  here  one  man  flourished  yesterday  another  man 
is  flourishing  to-day,  and  the  old  prosperity  has  disap- 
peared. Not  in  the  city,  as  in  the  country,  do  the  same 
households  hand  their  houses  down  for  generations  as 
if  they  had  some  chartered  privilege  of  security  with 


CHRISTIAN   CHARITY.  349 

which  no  upstart  aspirant  must  interfere.  In  the  midst 
of  this  pervading  atmosphere  of  chance,  of  opportunity, 
the  poor  man  walks  with  a  perpetually  disappointed 
hope  which  never  can  entirely  die  out  in  calm  despair ; 
restless  witli  a  continual  wonder  that,  in  all  this  cease- 
less cliaijge,  none  of  the  shifting  fortune  ever  falls  to 
him.  What  condition  of  things  could  be  more  fit  to 
create  discontent  which  never  ripens  into  energy,  a  move- 
ment which  can  only  fret  and  chafe.  The  city  poor 
man  seems  to  live  on  the  brink  of  a  Bethesda  which  the 
angel  is  forever  troubling,  but  into  which  he  learns 
to  peevishly  complain  that  there  is  no  man  to  put  him 
down  at  the  right  moment.  Its  waters  seem  to  mock 
and  taunt  him  as  they  sparkle  inaccessible  in  the  sun- 
light. 

And  again,  the  poor  man  in  a  great  city  sees  wealth 
and  wealthy  men  as  a  class.  He  does  not  know  them 
as  individuals.  And  a  class  of  men,  known  only  as  a 
class,  keeps  all  the  exasperating  qualities  of  personality, 
but  loses  the  graciousness  which  belongs  to  individual 
relations.  The  political  party  which  we  hate  is  always 
more  hateful  to  us  than  the  men  of  whom  it  is  com- 
posed. The  religious  sect  which  we  despise  is  always 
more  despicable  to  us  than  its  individual  believers. 

And  yet  again,  the  city  poor  man  is  very  apt  to  live 
in  squalid  circumstances  which,  while  they  make  him 
wretched  and  embittered,  disable  at  the  same  time  the 
powers  of  repair,  and  beget  a  dull  and  heavy  careless- 
ness. To  the  poor  man  in  the  country,  however  poor  he 
is,  the  bright  skies  at  least  bring  unconscious  influences 
of  order ;  and  the  fields,  with  their  circling  seasons,  will 
not  let  him  totally  forget  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 


850  CHRISTIAN   CHARITY. 

beauty.  You  cannot  shut  out  the  horizon  with  its  hope 
from  the  most  hopeless  soul.  He  little  knows  how  al- 
most absolutely  indestructible  is  the  elasticity  of  the 
human  soul,  who  thinks  that  poverty  in  the  city  loses 
nothing  in  being  condemned  to  live  in  the  midst  of  per- 
petual disorder,  ugliness,  and  dirt. 

And  still,  with  all  his  enforced  hopelessness,  the  stir 
of  the  great  city  keeps  the  mind  of  the  poor  man  in  its 
midst  alive,  awake.  He  never  can  become  as  torpid  as 
the  country  clown.  There  is  no  opiate  for  him  in  the 
thin  and  eager  air.  He  must  lie  upon  his  rack  with 
senses  all  acute  and  active. 

And  yet,  once  more,  the  poor  man  finds  himself  of 
necessity  made  a  servant  and  contributor  to  the  very 
wealth  which  overbeais  him,  and  whose  existence  often 
seems  to  him  an  insult.  In  the  complex  existence 
where  he  lives,  he  cannot  draw  his  life  apart  and  till  his 
little  plot  of  earth  and  disregard  the  M^ealth  which  he 
cannot  possess.  He  has  to  build  up  fortunes  which  are 
not  his  own.  He  seems  to  be  the  rich  men's  creature, 
used  for  their  purposes  as  long  as  they  require  him  ; 

"  And  having  brought  theii-  treasure  where  they  will, 
Then  take  they  down  his  load,  and  turn  him  off, 
liike  to  an  empty  ass,  to  shake  his  ears 
And  graze  in  commons." 

And  then,  to  name  only  one  circumstance  more,  if,  as 
so  often  is  the  case,  the  poor  man  in  the  city  is  one  who 
once  was  prosperous,  he  is  kept  sore  always  by  having  to 
live  in  the  presence  of  his  old  prosperity.  He  meets 
his  old  proud  footprints  stamped  in  the  familiar  streets. 
The  ghost  of  what  he  used  to  be  insults  him  everywhere. 
The  memory  of  other  days  intensifies  each  misery.     He 


CHRISTIAN    CHARITY.  351 

cannot  draw  a  curtain  of  forgetfulness  about  his  altered 
lot,  and  fall  asleep  in  dull  content. 

Now  put  all  these  conditions  together  in  your  mind, 
and  then  think  what  a  tumult  of  unrest,  of  hopeless, 
blind,  unreasonable,  disorderly  repining  and  complaint 
the  poor  man  of  the  city  carries  in  his  heart.  He  does 
not  analyze  it  into  its  elements,  as  I  have  tried  to  do, 
but  it  is  all  there;  far  more  terrible  in  its  unanalyzed 
completeness  than  any  such  enumeration  of  its  elements 
can  describe.  He  is  no  man  of  our  imaginations,  no 
mere  lay-figure  for  a  sermon.  He  is  real.  You  meet  him 
every  day.  His  is  the  face  that  looks  moodily  at  you  as 
you  hurry  by  him  on  the  sidewalk,  or  throw  the  street's 
mud  from  your  carriage  wheels  upon  his  coat.  His  is 
the  hand  that  rings  your  door-bell  in  the  dusk ;  and  his 
the  voice  that  whines  and  cringes  to  you  in  your  hall, 
and  curses  you  as  he  goes  down  your  steps,  with  the 
memory  of  your  glowing  comfort  before  his  eyes,  and 
your  quiet  assurance  that  you  have  no  money  to  give 
him  in  his  ears,  and  the  leaden  load  of  wretchedness 
and  disappointment  heavier  than  ever  at  his  heart.  His 
is  the  house  you  hurry  by  in  some  back  street,  and 
wonder  how  a  man  can  live  in  such  a  place  as  that. 
And  O !  be  sure  there  do  come  to  him  hours  when  that 
horrible  home  seems  to  him  every  whit  as  hateful  as  it 
does  to  you.  He  is  no  fancy.  He  is  terribly  real.  The 
streets  reproach  him  with  their  boisterous  prosperity  and 
arrogant  wealth.  To  us  those  streets  are  sympathetic. 
To  prosperous  men,  full  of  activity,  full  of  life,  the  city 
streets,  overrunning  with  human  vitality,  are  full  of  a 
sympathy,  a  sense  of  human  fellowship,  a  comforting  com- 
panionship, in  all  that  mass  of  unknown  and,  as  it  were. 


352  CHRISTIAN   CHARITY, 

generic  men  and  women,  which  no  utterance  of  special 
friendship  or  pity  from  the  best-known  lips  can  bring. 
The  live  and  active  man  takes  his  trouble  out  into  the 
crowded  streets  and  finds  it  comforted  by  the  myste- 
rious consolation  of  his  race.  He  takes  his  perplexity 
out  there,  and  its  darkness  grows  bright  in  the  diffused, 
unconscious  light  of  human  life.  But  when  activity 
beats  low  and  life  has  lost  its  buoyancy,  when  the 
wretched  man  is  miserably  and  desperately  poor,  then 
the  streets  and  the  crowds  are  no  longer  sympathetic; 
then  the  great  sea  which  used  to  heave  the  strong  ship 
on,  whether  it  would  go  or  no,  opens  its  depth  and  drowns 
the  broken  wreck.  Ah,  how  little  do  we  know  of  how 
the  great  full  city  which  is  always  enticing  and  encour- 
aging and  exhilarating  us,  is  mocking  and  beating  down 
and  treading  under  foot  some  poor  brother  who  walks 
along  the  pavement  by  one  side. 

What  can  we  do  about  it,  do  you  say  ?  Ah,  that  is 
the  question  that  our  charity  and  charitable  people  are 
just  coming  to  see  that  they  must  answer.  Thank  God, 
they  are  learning  to  look  deeper  for  their  answer  than 
they  have  ever  looked  before.  They  will  find  the  an- 
swer gradually.  Some  time  or  other  they  will  find  it 
perfectly.  I  certainly  am  not  so  foolish  as  to  think 
that  I  can  give  it  ready-made  here  in  the  hurried  end 
of  a  sermon.  Enough  if  I  have  set  any  of  you  to  think- 
ing that  it  must  be  found,  and  that  the  finding  of  it  is 
no  easy  task. 

But  one  or  two  things  let  me  say  before  I  close,  that 
I  may  not  seem  to  have  spoken  wholly  unpractically. 
The  first  thing  that  men  must  do  in  order  that  they  may 
really,  thoroughly  relieve   the   poor,   is   to   profoundly 


CHRISTIAN    CHARITY.  353 

recognize  that  there  can  be  no  complete  and  permanent 
relief  until  not  merely  men  who  have  money  shall  have 
given  it  to  men  who  have  no  money,  but  until  men 
who  have  character  shall  have  given  it  to  men  who  are 
deficient  in  that  last  and  only  real  possession.  Not 
till  you  make  men  self-reliant,  intelligent,  and  fond  of 
struggle,  fonder  of  struggle  than  of  mere  help,  —  not  till 
then  have  you  relieved  poverty.  If  you  could  give  every 
poor  man  in  this  town  of  ours  a  house,  a  wardrobe,  and 
a  balance  in  the  bank  to-morrow,  do  you  think  there 
would  not  be  poor  men  and  rich  men  here  among  us 
still  ?  There  must  be,  so  long  as  there  are  some  men 
with  the  spirit  of  independence,  the  light  of  intelligence, 
and  the  love  of  struggle ;  and  other  men  who  have  none 
of  those  things,  which  make  the  only  true  riches  of  a 
manly  man.  And  the  second  thing  is  this  :  the  rich  men 
of  our  community  must  be  truly  rich  themselves,  or  they 
can  have  nothing  worth  giving  to  the  poor ;  nothing  with 
which  they  can  permanently  help  their  poorer  brethren. 
Only  a  class  of  men  independent,  intelligent,  and  glory- 
ing in  struggle  themselves,  can  really  send  independence, 
intelligence,  and  the  dignity  of  struggle,  down  through  a 
whole  city's  life.  This  is  the  reason  why  your  selfish 
and  idle  rich  man,  who  has  neither  of  these  great  hu- 
man properties,  does  nothing  for  the  permanent  help  of 
poverty.  The  money  which  he  gives  is  no  symbol.  It 
means  nothing.  0  let  us  be  sure  that  the  first  necessity 
for  giving  the  poor  man  character  is  that  the  rich  man 
should  have  character  to  give  him. 

And  then,  lastly,  the  rich  men,  rich  in  character,  must 
know  that  no  man  can  give  character  to  other  men 
without  self-sacrifice.     Labor,  personal  effort,  personal 

23 


354  CHRISTIAN   CHARITY. 

intercourse  with  the  poor,  these  must  come  in  before 
the  work  can  be  done.  You  cannot  do  your  duty  to 
the  poor  by  a  society.  Your  life  must  touch  their  life. 
You  try  to  work  solely  by  a  society,  and  what  does  it 
come  to  ?  Is  it  not  the  old  story  of  the  book  of  Samuel  ? 
The  traveller  appeals  to  you,  and  you  spare  to  take  of 
your  own  thought  and  time  and  sympathy  to  give  to 
the  wayfaring  man  that  is  come  to  you.  They  are 
too  precious.  You  say  :  "  There  is  thought,  time,  sym- 
pathy, down  at  the  charity  bureau  to  which  I  have  a 
right  by  virtue  of  a  contribution  I  have  made.  Go 
down  and  get  a  ticket's  worth  of  that." 

The  poor  are  always  with  us.  The  wayfarers  come 
to  us  continually,  and  they  do  not  come  by  chance. 
God  sends  them.  And  as  they  come,  with  their  white 
faces  and  their  poor  scuttling  feet,  they  are  our  judges. 
Not  merely  by  whether  we  give,  but  by  how  we  give  and 
by  what  we  give,  they  judge  us.  One  man  sends  them 
entirely  away.  Another  drops  a  little  easy,  careless,  un- 
conscientious money  into  their  hands.  Another  man 
washes  and  clothes  them.  Another  man  teaches  them 
lessons.  Thank  God  there  are  some  men  and  women 
here  and  there,  full  of  the  power  of  the  Gospel,  who 
cannot  rest  satisfied  till  they  have  opened  their  very 
hearts  and  given  the  poor  wayfaring  men  the  only 
thing  which  really  is  their  own,  themselves,  their  faith, 
their  energy,  their  hope  in  God.  Of  such  true  charity- 
givers  may  He  who  gave  Himself  for  us  increase  the 
multitude  among  us  every  day. 


XXI. 

THE   MARKS   OF   THE  LORD   JESUS. 

"  From  henceforth  let  no  man  trouble  me,  for  I  bear  in  my  body  the 
marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus." — Galatians  vi.  17. 

A  MAN  who  is  growing  old  claims  for  himself  in 
these  words  the  freedom  and  responsibility  of  his  own 
life.  He  asks  that  he  may  work  out  his  own  career 
uninterfered  with  by  the  criticism  of  his  brethren.  He 
bids  them  stand  aside  and  leave  him  to  the  Master 
whom  he  serves  and  by  whom  he  must  be  judged.  How 
natural  that  demand  is !  How  we  all  long  at  times  to 
make  it !  How  every  man,  even  if  he  dares  not  claim 
it  now,  looks  forward  to  some  time  when  it  must  be 
made.  He  knows  the  time  will  come  when,  educated 
perhaps  for  that  moment  by  what  his  brethren's  criti- 
cism has  done  for  him,  he  will  be  ready  and  it  will  be 
his  duty  to  turn  aside  and  leave  that  criticism  unlistened 
to  and  say,  "  From  henceforth  let  no  man  trouble  me. 
Now  I  must  live  my  own  life.  I  understand  it  best. 
You  must  stand  aside  and  let  me  go  the  way  where 
God  is  leading  me."  When  a  man  is  heard  saying  that, 
his  fellow-men  look  at  him  and  they  can  see  how  he  is 
saying  it.  They  know  the  difference  between  a  wilful 
and  selfish  independence,  and  a  sober,  earnest  sense  of 
responsibility.  They  can  tell  when  the  man  really  has 
a  right  to  claim  his  life ;  and  if  he  has,  they  will  give  it 


?>o6  THE   MAKKS   OF   THE   LORD   JESUS. 

to  him.     They  will  stand  aside  and  not  dare  to  inter- 
fere while  he  works  it  out  with  God. 

This  was  St.  Paul's  claim,  and  he  told  the  Galatians 
what  right  he  had  to  make  it.  "  From  henceforth  let 
no  man  trouble  me,  for  I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of 
the  Lord  Jesus."  It  is  the  reason  for  his  claim  of  in- 
dependence that  I  want  to  study  with  you.  "  I  bear  in 
my  body  the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus."  He  was  grow- 
ing an  old  man.  Anybody  who  looked  at  him  saw  his 
body  covered  with  the  signs  of  pain  and  care.  The 
haggard,  wrinkled  face,  the  bent  figure,  the  trembling 
hands ;  the  scars  which  he  had  worn  since  the  day  when 
they  beat  him  at  Philippi,  since  the  day  when  they 
stoned  him  at  Lystra,  since  the  day  when  he  was  ship- 
wrecked at  Melita ;  all  these  had  robbed  him  forever  of 
the  fresh,  bright  beauty  which  he  had  had  once  M'hen  he 
sat,  a  boy,  at  the  feet  of  old  Gamaliel.  He  was  stamped 
and  marked  by  life.  The  wounds  of  his  conflicts,  the 
furrows  of  his  years,  were  on  him.  And  all  these  wounds 
and  furrows  had  come  to  him  since  the  great  change  of 
his  life.  They  were  closely  bound  up  with  the  service 
of  his  Master  to  whom  he  had  given  himself  at  Damas- 
cus. Every  scar  must  have  still  quivered  with  the 
earnestness  of  the  words  of  Christian  loyalty  which 
brought  the  blow  that  made  it.  See  what  he  calls  these 
scars,  then.  "  I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of  the  Lord 
Jesus."  He  had  a  figure  in  his  mind.  He  was  think- 
ing of  the  way  in  which  a  master  branded  his  slaves. 
Burnt  into  their  very  flesh,  they  carried  the  initial  of 
their  master's  name,  or  some  other  sign  that  they  be- 
longed to  him,  that  they  were  not  their  own.  That 
mark  on  the  slave's  body  forbade  any  other  but  his  own 


THE   MARKS   OF   THE   LORD   JESUS.  357 

master  to  touch  him  or  compel  his  labor.  It  was  the  \ 
sign  at  once  of  his  servitude  to  one  master  and  of  his 
freedom  from  all  others.  So  St.  Paul  says  that  these 
marks  in  his  flesh,  which  signify  his  servantship  to 
Jesus,  are  the  witnesses  of  his  freedom  from  every  other 
service.  Since  he  is  responsible  to  his  Master  he  is 
responsible  to  no  one  else.  "  From  henceforth  let  no 
man  trouble  me,  for  I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of  the 
Lord  Jesus." 

It  is  a  vivid,  graphic  figure.  I  hope  that  we  shall  find 
that  it  may  be  as  true  of  the  life  of  any  one  of  us  as  it  was 
of  the  life  of  Paul.  We  see  at  once  with  what  a  pathos  and 
a  dignity  it  clothes  the  human  body.  It  makes  the  body 
the  interpreter  of  the  spiritual  life  that  goes  on  within 
it,  the  register  of  its  experiences.  A  very  clumsy  and  im- 
perfect interpreter  of  the  soul  indeed  the  body  is,  and 
yet  we  all  know  that  it  gets  its  real  interest  from  what 
power  of  interpretation  and  record  it  does  possess.  A 
scar  upon  the  face  recalls  some  time  of  pain  and  peril, 
and  lets  us  know  of  a  soul  that  has  undergone  the  disci- 
pline of  danger.  Whether  the  pain  came  and  was  met 
nobly  or  meanly,  whether  it  was  the  peril  of  the  soldier 
or  the  peril  of  the  burglar,  the  dumb  scar  cannot  tell. 
The  quiet  peaceful  smile  upon  the  face  declares  the  soul 
at  rest ;  but  whether  the  rest  be  idle  self-indulgence,  or 
the  satisfaction  of  a  soul  at  peace  with  duty,  only  he 
who  reads  behind  the  smile  into  its  subtlest  meaning 
is  able  to  discover.  Yet  in  its  clumsy,  halting  way  the 
outer  is  the  record  of  the  inner  life.  The  body  tells  the 
story  of  the  soul.  We  bear  in  our  flesh  the  marks  of 
our  masters.  The  hard  hand  of  the  laborer  tells  that  he 
is  the  servant  of  unpitying  toil.     The  knit  brow  of  the 


358  THE   MARKS    OF   THE   LORD   JESUS. 

merchant  declares  what  master  sits  over  him  in  his 
anxious  office.  The  serious  forehead  of  the  thinker  re- 
veals his  service  to  his  master,  Truth.  And  when  we  lay 
a  human  body  in  the  ground  at  last  there  is  a  reverence 
or  a  pity  which  starts  within  us  as  we  see  the  coffin-lid 
close  on  the  marks  of  noble  or  ignoble  servantship  which 
years  have  left  written  on  the  face. 

This  is  the  principle  on  which  rests  St.  Paul's  descrip- 
tion of  himself.  And  now  let  us  see  how  that  same  de- 
scription may  be  true  of  men  to-day ;  how  they  still  may 
bear  in  their  bodies  the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  the 
very  brands,  as  it  were,  which  declare  them  to  be  His  ser- 
vants, His  property.  Here  is  a  man  whose  body  shows 
the  signs  of  toil  and  care.  I  will  not  read  the  long  famil- 
iar catalogue.  The  whitened  hair,  the  cautious  step,  the 
dulness  in  the  eye,  the  forehead  seamed  with  thought ; 
you  know  them  all,  you  watch  their  coming  in  your  friend, 
you  feel  their  coming  in  yourself.  What  do  they  mean  ? 
In  the  first  and  largest  way  they  mean  life.  The  differ- 
ence between  this  man  and  the  baby,  in  whose  soft  flesh 
there  are  no  branded  marks  like  these,  is  that  this  man 
has  lived.  But  then  they  mean  also  all  that  life  has 
meant ;  and  life,  below  its  special  circumstances,  always 
means  the  mastery  in  obedience  to  whicli  all  the  actions 
have  been  done  and  all  the  character  has  taken  shape. 
"  Who  is  your  master  ? "  is  the  question  that  includes 
all  questions.  And  if  a  man  tries  to  push  that  question 
aside ;  if  he  says,  "  Nay,  but  my  life  cannot  be  judged 
so,  for  I  have  no  master,"  still  he  answers  the  question 
which  he  rejects.  He  answers  it  in  rejecting  it.  He 
declares  that  he  is  his  own  master.  And  then  he  bears 
in  hii]  body  the  marks  of  himself ;  the  faded  colors  and 


THE   MARKS   OF  THE  LORD   JESUS.  359 

the  scars  mean  only  wilfulness  and  selfishness.  But 
now  suppose  that  life  has  meant  for  that  man,  from  the 
beginning,  the  claiming  of  his  soul  by  a  higher  soul ;  sup- 
pose that  every  new  experience  has  seemed  in  its  heart, 
its  meaning,  its  spirit,  to  be  only  a  little  closer  overfold- 
ing  and  embracing  of  the  will  by  the  Supreme  Will ; 
suppose  that  as  the  result  of  all,  as  the  blended  and 
completed  issue  of  all  this  living,  the  life  is  Christ's  life, 
uttering  His  wishes,  seeking  His  purposes,  filled  and 
inspired  by  His  love,  reckoning  its  vitality  by  the  de- 
gree of  conscious  and  realized  sympathy  with  Him ;  sup- 
pose all  this,  and  then  it  will  be  true  that  every  outward 
sign  in  which  those  inward  experiences  are  recorded 
will  become  a  mark  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  a  sign  of  that 
occupation  of  the  nature  by  His  nature,  of  the  owner- 
sliip  of  the  man  by  Him,  which  is  what  it  has  meant 
for  this  man  to  live. 

For  instance,  here  among  the  white  careworn  features 
there  are  certain  lines  which  tell,  beyond  all  misunder- 
standing, that  this  man  has  struggled  and  has  had  to  yield. 
Somewhere  or  other,  sometime  or  other,  he  has  tried  to  do 
something  which  he  very  much  wanted  to  do,  and  failed. 
As  clear  as  the  scratches  on  the  rock  which  make  us 
sure  that  the  glacier  has  ground  its  way  along  its  face, 
so  clearly  this  man  lets  us  know  that  he  has  been 
pressed  and  crushed  and  broken  by  a  weight  which  was 
too  strong  for  him.  What  was  that  weight  ?  If  it  were 
only  disappointment,  then  these  marks  are  the  marks 
of  simple  failure.  If  the  weight  were  laid  on  him  as 
punishment,  then  these  marks  are  marks  of  sin.  If 
it  were  a  weight  of  culture,  then  the  marks  are  marks 
of  education.     If  the  weight  was  the  personal  hand 


360  THE  MARKS   OF   THE   LORD   JESUS. 

of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  teaching  the  man  that  his 
own  will  must  be  surrendered  to  the'  will  of  a  Lord 
to  whom  he  belonged ;  if  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  has 
been  drawing  him  away  from  every  other  obedience 
to  His  obedience ;  then  these  marks  which  he  bears  in 
his  body  are  the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus.  It  is  as  if 
a  master,  seeking  for  liis  sheep,  found  him  all  snarled 
and  tangled  in  a  thicket,  clinging  to  and  clung  to  by 
the  thorns  and  cruel  branches.  He  unsnarls  him  with 
all  tenderness,  but  the  poor  captive  cannot  escape  with- 
out wounds.  He  even  clings  himself  to  the  thorns  that 
hold  him,  and  so  is  wounded  all  the  more.  "V^Tien 
the  rescue  is  complete  and  the  master  stands  with  his 
sheep  in  safety,  he  looks  down  on  him  and  says  :  "  I 
need  not  brand  you  more.  These  wounds  which  have 
come  in  your  rescue  will  be  forever  signs  that  you  be- 
long to  me.  No  other  sheep  will  carry  scars  just  like 
them,  for  every  sheep's  wanderings,  and  so  every  sheep's 
wounds,  are  different  from  every  other's.  Their  pain 
will  pass  away,  but  the  tokens  of  the  trials  through 
which  T  brought  you  to  my  service  will  remain.  They 
shall  declare  that  you  are  mine.  You  shall  bear  in  your 
body  my  marks  forever." 

And  then  what  follows  ?  Freedom  !  "  I  bear  in  my 
body  the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus  ;  therefore  let  no  man 
trouble  me."  I  think  that  we  have  all  seen  how  there 
are  two  classes  among  experienced  and  world-worn 
men.  Some  men  with  their  scars  and  wrinlvles  and 
wounds  grow  timid,  cringing,  and  spiritless.  Their  only 
object  seems  to  be  to  get  through  the  rest  of  life  with 
as  few  more  shocks  and  blows  as  possible.  They  apolo- 
gize for  living.     They  try  to  keep  out  of  other  men's 


THE  MARKS   OF  THE   LORD  JESUS.  361 

way  and  so  are  always  open  to  their  criticism,  and 
slaves  of  their  whims.  Poor  broken  creatures  they  are. 
And  then  there  are  other  men,  whose  hard  experience 
of  life  has  evidently  lifted  them  away  from  any  anxious 
care  about  what  other  men  may  think  of  them,  given 
them  an  independent  self-contained  life,  and  made  them 
free.  What  is  it  that  makes  the  difference  ?  Does  it 
not  all  depend  on  this :  on  whether  the  experience  of 
life  has  given  a  man  any  new  master  whom  he  trusts 
and  serves ;  on  whether  the  "  marks  in  his  body,"  the 
scars  and  bruises,  are  the  ownership  marks  of  any  recog- 
nized and  trusted  Lord ;  or  whether  they  are  only  the 
unmeaning  records  of  an  aimless  drifting  hither  and 
thither  among  the  rocks  ?  The  master  may  be  more  or 
less  worthy.  If  there  only  be  a  master,  the  man  is  free 
from  all  other  servitudes.  His  marks  are  signs  of  lib- 
erty. It  may  be  only  that  he  has  made  his  own  pas- 
sions his  lord.  In  self-indulgence  and  self-admiration 
he  may  have  settled  down  to  the  mere  service  of  him- 
self. But  even  in  selfishness  there  is  freedom.  The 
man  of  fixed  contented  selfishness  is  liberated  from  a 
hundred  cares  about  what  other  people  think  of  him,  or 
what  they  have  a  right  to  ask.  But  let  the  new  master 
which  life  has  given  us  be  a  principle,  a  cause,  even  a 
petty  conscientious  scruple,  and  then  how  clear  the 
freedom  from  our  fellows'  tyranny  becomes.  "  From 
hencefortli  let  no  man  trouble  me,  for  I  must  do  my 
duty  ;  I  must  work  out  my  study ;  I  must  maintain  my 
cause."  Very  hard  and  sullen  and  cruel  often  gi'ows 
the  independence  that  is  born  of  such  a  mastery.  But 
now  suppose  that  not  one's  self,  and  not  some  abstract 
cause,  but  the  Lord  Jesus  is  the  Master  to  whom  the 


362  THE   MARKS   OF  THE  LORD  JESUS. 

body's  marks  bear  witness.  The  strongest  and  yet  the 
gentlest  of  all  masters  !  The  gentlest  yet  the  strongest ! 
Then  comes  an  independence  which  is  complete  and  yet 
which  has  no  bitterness.  There  is  no  crude  'and  weak 
contempt  of  fellow-men,  while  yet  there  is  a  calm  and 
complete  assertion  that  no  fellow-man  must  hinder  or 
intrude  upon  our  life. 

Indeed  there  is,  in  all  the  independence  which  the 
Christian  as  the  servant  of  Christ  claims  with  reference 
to  his  fellow-men,  this  subtle  element  which  always  re- 
deems his  independence  from  indifference  or  cruelty,  — 
that  the  first  duty  which  his  new  Master  lays  upon  him 
is  to  go  and  serve  and  help  those  very  fellow-men  from 
whom  he  has  plucked  away  his  life,  that  he  may  give  it 
completely  to  this  loftier  service.  This  is  the  noble 
poise  and  balance  of  the  Christian  life.  Christ  rescues 
the  soul  from  the  obedience  of  the  world  in  order  that 
in  His  obedience  it  may  serve  the  world  with  a  com- 
pleter consecration.  The  soul  tears  itself  away  from 
slavery  to  the  world  and  gives  itself  to  Christ ;  and  lo, 
in  Him  it  serves  the  world  for  which  He  lived  and 
died,  with  a  devoted  faithfulness  of  which  it  never 
dreamed  before.  Paul  was  never  so  busy  working  for 
men  as  in  this  very  day  when  he  cried  out,  "  Let  no 
man  trouble  me."  His  cry  was  primarily  a  demand 
that  no  man  should  dare  to  question  his  apostolical 
commission,  because  Christ  had  adopted  him  ;  but  the 
more  earnestly  that  he  refused  to  let  men  question  that 
deep  transaction  which  lay  between  his  soul  and  his 
Master's,  so  much  the  more  completely  did  he  give  him- 
self up  to  the  service  of  the  men  who  he  insisted  should 
not  be  his  judges  or  his  lords. 


THE   MARKS   OF  THE   LORD  JESUS.  363 

One  principle  you  see  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  that 
we  are  saying,  of  all  that  Paul  says  in  this  verse.  It  is 
that  no  man  in  this  world  attains  to  freedom  from  any 
slavery  except  by  entrance  into  some  higher  servitude. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  entirely  free  man  conceiv- 
able. If  there  were  one  such  being  he  would  be  lost  in 
this  great  universe,  all  strung  through  as  it  is  with  obli- 
gations, somewhere  in  the  net  of  which  every  man  must 
find  his  place.  It  is  uot  whether  you  are  free  or  a  ser- 
vant, but  whose  servant  you  are,  that  is  the  question. 
This  was  what  Jesus  said.  "  No  man  can  serve  two 
masters."  "  Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  mammon."  It 
was  always  a  clioice  of  masters  to  which  He  was  urging 
men.  The  Son  who  was  to  "  make  them  free  so  that 
they  should  be  free  iudeed,"  was  to  be  one  to  whom  they 
should  show  their  love  by  "  keeping  Ifis  command- 
ments." To  know  this  truth  is  the  first  opening  of  the 
gates  of  life  to  a  young  man.  It  is  not  by  striking 
off  all  allegiance,  but  by  finding  your  true  Lord  and 
serving  Him  with  a  complete  submission,  that  you  can 
escape  from  slavery,  "  I  will  walk  at  liberty,  for  I  keep 
Thy  commandments,"  said  David.  This  is  the  univer- 
sal necessity  of  faith,  which  is  but  the  obedience  of  the 
complete  man,  soul  as  well  as  body.  This  is  the  ever- 
lasting and  fundamental  difference  between  two  inquir- 
ing and  seeking  souls.  One  of  them  is  looking  for  some 
door  which  shall  lead  out  into  absolute  freedom.  The 
other  is  asking  with  free-eyed  earnestness  for  its  true 
Master.  Before  the  one  there  can  be  nothing  but  vague 
restlessness  and  endless  discontent.  The  other  shall 
certainly  some  day  anive  at  peace  in  believing  and 
obeying,     O  my  dear  friend,  look  for  your  master.     Be 


364  THE    MAKES   OF   THE   LORD   JESUS. 

satisfied  with  none  until  you  find  Him  who  by  His 
love  and  His  wisdom  and  His  power  has  the  right  to 
rule  you.  Then  give  yourself  to  Him  completely.  Let 
Him  mark  you  as  His  by  whatever  marks  He  will. 
Count  every  such  mark  a  privilege.  Find  in  His  ser- 
vice the  charter  of  your  freedom.  Kesist  all  other 
men's  intrusion  on  your  life,  because  your  life  belongs 
to  Him.  Be  jealous  for  it  as  your  Lord's  domain.  That 
is  the  real  emancipation  of  the  soul  of  a  child  of  God, 
its  total  consecration  to  its  Father. 

It  is  not  only  in  the  duties  of  active  life  that  a  man 
receives  the  mark  of  Christ  and  enters  into  the  liberty 
which  He  bestows.  The  same  liberation  sometimes  comes 
by  sickness  and  the  incapacity  for  work.  I  can  speak 
perhaps  more  clearly  if  I  picture  to  myself  some  one 
here  in  my  congregation  on  whom  that  calamity  has 
fallen.  For  years  you  have  been  doing  your  part  in  the 
world.  You  have  held  your  own.  You  have  asked 
nothing,  you  have  taken  nothing,  from  your  fellow-men. 
But  suddenly,  it  may  be,  the  blow  has  fallen  on  you. 
Sickness  has  come.  You  cannot  work.  You  are  de- 
pendent where  you  used  to  trust  only  in  yourself.  How 
terrible  it  is  !  How  it  seems  as  if  now  all  liberty  were 
gone.  You  must  stretch  out  your  hand  in  your  blind- 
ness for  somebody  to  lead  you.  You  must  open  your 
helpless  mouth  for  somebody  to  feed  you.  Life  seems 
all  slavery  and  uselessness.  What  can  release  you  ?  If 
it  could  come  to  pass  that  by  your  pain  you  should  be 
brought  into  a  personal  knowledge  of  Him  who  can  con- 
sole your  pain ;  that  by  your  weakness  you  could  be 
brought  to  a  personal  reliance  on  His  strength  ;  and  so 
your  pain  and  weakness  could  become  to  you  profoundly 


THE  MARKS   OF  THE   LORD  JESUS.  365 

and  inseparably  associated  with  your  allegiance  to  Him, 
—  then  see  !  Would  they  not  be  transformed  ?  Still  you 
must  rest  on  others  for  what  you  would  gladly  do  for 
yourself.  But  it  would  be  no  enfeeblement,  no  demor- 
alization of  your  life.  The  higher  meaning  of  your 
pain  would  swallow  up  its  lower  meaning.  The  asso- 
ciation which  it  made  for  you  with  God  would  overrule 
the  association  which  it  made  for  you  with  your  brethren. 
Through  Him  on  whom  it  made  you  able  to  rely,  you 
would  be  strengthened  so  that  even  those  on  whom  you 
rested  physically  every  day  would  feel  your  strength 
and  spiritually  rest  on  you.  That  would  be  freedom 
for  you. 

Such  sicknesses  there  are.  Such  we  have  sometimes 
known ;  some  men  or  women,  helpless  so  that  their  lives 
seemed  to  be  all  dependent,  who  yet,  through  their  sick- 
ness, had  so  mounted  to  a  higher  life  and  so  identified 
themselves  with  Christ  that  those  on  whom  they  rested 
found  the  Christ  in  them  and  rested  upon  it.  Their  sick- 
rooms became  churches.  Their  weak  voices  spoke  gospels. 
The  hands  they  seemed  to  clasp  were  really  clasping  theirs. 
They  were  depended  on  while  they  seemed  to  be  most 
dependent.  And  when  they  died,  when  the  faint  flicker 
of  their  life  went  out,  strong  men  whose  light  seemed 
radiant,  found  themselves  walking  in  the  darkness  ;  and 
stout  hearts  on  which  theirs  used  to  lean,  trembled  as  if 
the  staff  and  substance  of  their  strength  was  gone.  A 
noble  freedom  certainly  is  this  in  which  the  arm  that 
holds  you  up  is  really  held  up  by  you  ;  in  which,  while 
others  think  they  are  supporting  you,  you  really  are 
supporting  them  ;  and  this  noble  freedom  may  come  to 
any  weak  and  wounded  life  whose  wounds  and  weak- 


366  THE  MARKS  OF  THE   LORD  JESUS. 

ness  have  become  the  signs  and  tokens  that  it  belongs 
to  Christ. 

But  I  must  not  seem  to  speak  as  if  it  were  only  the 
sick  and  wounded  in  the  great  army  of  life  upon  whom 
the  great  Captain's  mark  is  set.  There  are  too  many 
young  eager,  hopeful  lives  here  before  me  who  belong  in 
the  very  van  of  that  army,  and  whose  strength  and  health 
find  no  worthy  and  sufficient  explanation,  unless  we 
see  in  them  the  marks  by  which  the  Lord  of  our  hu- 
manity would  claim  the  choicest  of  our  humanity  for 
his  own.  Remember  what  the  Incarnation  M^as.  "  The 
Word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us."  Then  were 
the  capacities  of  our  human  flesh  declared.  Then  in  the 
strong  and  healthy  life  of  Jesus  it  was  made  known  to 
what  divine  uses  a  strong  body  miglit  be  given.  And 
since  everything  in  this  world  properly  belongs  to  the 
highest  uses  to  which  it  may  possibly  be  put,  the  strong 
human  body  was  there  declared  to  belong  to  righteous- 
ness and  God.  Thenceforward,  after  Jesus  and  His  life, 
wherever  human  flesh  appeared  at  its  best,  wherever 
a  human  body  stood  forth  specially  strong,  specially  per- 
fect and  beautiful,  it  had  the  mark  and  memory  of  the 
Incarnation  on  it.  It  might  be  totally  perverted.  It 
might  be  given  to  the  Devil.  But,  since  the  work  that 
Jesus  did,  the  life  that  Jesus  lived  in  a  human  body,  the 
human  body  in  its  fullest  vigor  has  belonged  to  the 
high  work  which  He  did  in  it,  the  service  of  God  and 
help  of  fellow-man.  Its  vigor  is  His  mark  upon  it.  Feel 
this,  and  then  how  sacred  becomes  the  body's  health  and 
strength.  It  is  no  chance,  no  luxury.  God  means  that 
in  it  you  should  do  work  for  Him.  By  it  He  claims  you 
for  His  own.    He  to  whom  God  has  given  it,  is  bound  to 


THE  MARKS   OF  THE   LORD  JESUS.  367 

have  strong  convictions,  a  live  conscience,  and  intense 
earnest  purposes  of  work. 

Let  a  young  strong  man  feel  this  and  then  he  claims 
the  proper  freedom  of  his  youth.  "  Let  no  man  trouble 
me,"  he  says,  "  for  I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of  the 
Lord  Jesus."  I  have  tried  to  show  you  what  those  words 
luean  when  an  old  man  says  them  out  of  the  heart  of 
his  experience,  with  the  bruises  and  scars  of  a  hard  life 
all  over  him.  Even  more  solemn  and  full  of  meaning  they 
are  when  a  young  man  says  them  in  the  conscious  vigor 
and  full  consecration  of  his  youth.  "  You  must  not  ham- 
per and  restrain  me,"  he  asserts.  "  You  must  not  turn 
me  from  my  way  to  yours.  You  must  not  coldly  crit- 
icise all  that  I  try  to  do.  You  must  not  ask  me  to 
conform  to  all  the  traditions  which  your  cautiousness 
marks  out.  You  must  let  me  risk  something  of  repute, 
of  fortune,  of  comfort,  of  life  itself,  to  do  my  duty.  You 
must  not  think  me  arrogant  or  self-conceited  if  I  disre- 
gard both  your  anxiety  and  your  sneers,  and  go  the  way, 
the  new  way,  the  strange  way,  that  is  clearly  set  before 
me."  It  is  a  noble  thing  when  out  of  all  the  jealousy, 
out  of  all  the  anxiety  and  love  of  older  men,  a  young 
man  thus  quietly  and  lirmly  claims  his  life ;  but  the 
nobleness  only  comes  when  he  claims  his  lifs  because 
Christ  has  claimed  him,  and  because  the  full  vigor  and 
health  in  which  he  glories  are  to  him  marks  of  the  Lord 
Jesus.  To  give  one's  life  up  timidly  to  the  traditions 
that  demand  it  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  assert  one's 
independence  in  pure  wilfulness  on  the  other ;  both  of 
these  are  perversions  of  the  purpose  for  which  we  were 
made.  To  insist  that  we  must  have  our  lives  to  our- 
selves, that  their  own  power  may  be  worked  out  freely 


368  THE   MARKS   OF   THE   LORD   JESUS. 

because  we  belong  to  Christ,  that  is  the  perfect  scheme 
of  existence,  the  sanctificatiou  of  liberty,  the  transfigura- 
tion of  ambition. 

It  is  not  hard,  I  think,  to  believe  that  something  of 
this  sort  of  symbolic  consecration,  this  consecration  of 
the  spirit  under  tlie  body's  symbols,  may  pass  over  into 
the  other  life,  and  so  may  last  forever.  St.  Paul  tells 
us  that  in  heaven  we  are  to  have  a  spiritual  body  in 
place  of  the  natural  body  which  we  wear  here.  The 
privilege  of  that  spiritual  body  must  be  to  express  with 
perfect  clearness  the  experiences  of  the  spirit  which 
will  then  be  the  master.  And  if  the  great  experience 
of  the  soul  must  always  be  redemption,  redemption  re- 
membered in  its  beginning  here,  and  ever  going  on  to 
its  completion  through  eternity,  then  certainly  the  body, 
which  in  some  mysterious  way  will  bear  the  record  of 
that  process,  cannot  fail  to  speak  of  Christ  the  Eedeemer. 
The  imimaginable  perfectness  which  will  belong  to  every 
organ  will  forever  utter  Him.  Every  perfection  will  be 
a  new  mark  of  the  Lord  Jesus.  And  since  each  saint's 
belonging  to  the  Savior  must  be  forever  different  from 
every  other's,  each  saint  will  have  in  his  spiritual  body 
his  own  "  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus ; "  the  signs  of  how 
his  Lord  has  claimed  him  with  a  discriminating  love 
that  is  entirely  his  own,  different  from  that  with  which 
every  other  saint  in  all  the  millions  has  been  saved. 

In  such  a  thought  as  that  there  opens  before  me  all 
the  social  life  of  heaven.  It  is  all  liberty.  No  re- 
deemed spirit  shall  ever  have  the  power  or  the  wish  to 
encroach  a  hair's  breadth  upon  the  development  of  the 
redeemed  life  in  any  other.  Each  shall  grow  free  and 
straight  towards  its  own  perfectness.     And  yet  between 


THE   MARKS   OF   THE   LORD    JESUS.  369 

these  free  lives,  which  never  invade  one  another,  there 
will  always  be  the  complete  sympathy  of  a  common 
dependence  upon  the  one  Source  and  Savior  of  them  all. 
They  will  be  all  one,  because  they  all  belong  to  Christ, 
and  yet  the  separateness  of  each  shall  be  kept  perfect 
because  each  is  claimed  with  its  own  peculiar  claim 
and  marked  with  its  own  special  mark.  In  all  the 
solemnity  of  personalness  and  all  the  sweetness  of  broth- 
erhood, the  celestial  life  shall  flow  along  its  ever  deepen- 
ing way. 

And  must  we  wait  for  that  until  we  get  to  heaven  ? 
0  my  dear  friends,  in  this  w^orld,  full  of  crude  self-asser- 
tion and  of  feeble  conformity,  in  this  society  where  men 
invade  each  other's  lives,  and  yet  where,  if  one  man 
stands  out  and  claims  his  own  life,  his  claim  seems 
arrogant  and  harsh  and  makes  a  discord  in  the  feeble 
music  to  which  alone  it  seems  as  if  the  psalm  of  life 
could  be  sung ;  how  sometimes  we  have  dreamed  of  a 
better  state  of  things  in  which  each  man's  indepen- 
dence should  make  the  brotherhood  of  all  men  perfect ; 
where  the  more  earnestly  each  man  claimed  his  own 
life  for  himself  the  more  certainly  other  men  should 
know  that  that  life  was  given  to  them.  Must  we  wait 
for  such  a  society  as  that  until  we  get  to  heaven  ? 
Surely  not !  Even  here  every  man  may  claim  liis  own 
life,  not  for  himself  but  for  his  Lord.  Belonging  to  that 
Lord,  this  life  then  must  belong  through  Him  to  all  His 
bretliren.  And  so  all  that  the  man  plucked  out  of  their 
grasp,  to  give  to  Christ,  comes  back  to  them  freely,  sanc- 
tified and  ennobled  by  passing  through  Him  who  is  the 
Lord  and  Master  of  them  all. 

For  such  a  social  life  as  that  we  have  a  right  to  pray. 
24 


370  THE   MARKS   OF   THE  LORD   JESUS. 

But  we  may  do  more  than  pray  for  it.  We  may  begin 
it  in  ourselves.  Already  we  may  give  ourselves  to 
Christ.  We  may  own  that  we  are  His.  We  may  see 
in  all  our  bodily  life,  —  in  the  strength  and  glory  of  our 
youth  if  we  are  young  and  strong,  in  the  weariness  and 
depression  of  our  age  or  feebleness  if  we  are  old  and 
feeble,  —  the  marks  of  His  ownership,  the  signs  that  we 
are  His.  We  may  wait  for  His  coming  to  claim  us,  as 
the  marked  tree  back  in  the  woods  waits  till  the  ship- 
builder who  has  struck  his  sign  into  it  with  his  axe 
comes  by  and  by  to  take  it  and  make  it  part  of  the 
great  ship  that  he  is  building.  And  while  we  wait  we 
may  make  the  world  stronger  by  being  our  own,  and 
sweeter  by  being  our  brethren's  ;  and  both,  because  and 
only  because  we  are  really  not  our  own  nor  theirs,  but 
Christ's.     Such  lives  may  He  give  to  us  all ! 


Date  Due 

4ihll  M 

. 

i^/>r^ 

^  J,'"  '^ 

^'^J^^ 

'3BI»f 

**«■  -     -^'^ 

«« . 

^/=  f- , 

ru/  ^  ^  ^^ 

»le  *>  -  ^4<? 

Ql/  -?^-.   vij-n 

i^"'^ 

fWt     -ii""    '(JjH^ 

<^^^B.: 

i\ 

Jl  3  C  '4 

^ffflf  ^.».*<i 

» 

'1 

m  i  4     .^ 

%  2-   VJ5 

J  - 

f> 

